Media regulation: blog tasks

Go to our Media Factsheet archive on the Media Shared drive and open Factsheet 128: Contemporary Media Regulation. Our Media Factsheet archive can be found at M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets. You can find it online here - you'll need to log in using your Greenford Google login. 

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks:

1) What is regulation and why do media industries need to be regulated?

Systems of regulation are required to provide rules and regulations to ensure that organisations operate fairly. In the media industry there are several regulatory bodies that exist to monitor the way that their industries work. The media needs to be regulated as it can be a dangerous place for people such as children as if it not regulated people can see or access illegal things 

2) What is OFCOM responsible for?

Responsible for regulating television, radio, telephone services and some aspects of the internet, although the areas most relevant to media students are TV and radio. Responsible for granting licences to TV and Radio stations and it is illegal to broadcast TV or Radio signals without a licence from OFCOM

3) Look at the section on the OFCOM broadcasting code. Which do you think are the three most important sections of the broadcasting code and why?

The code applies to television and radio programmes in the UK and lays out rules about the kind of content that is acceptable for broadcasters to include.

Section 1: Protecting the Under-Eighteens

Section 3: Crime

Section 8: Privacy

I think that these 3 sections are the most important as protecting under under-eighteens is essential to protecting their moral and cognitive development as certain texts might prove too emotionally advanced for someone under the age of 18 and they might interpret it differently to what was intended and may prove dangerous 

4) Do you agree with OFCOM that Channel 4 was wrong to broadcast 'Wolverine' at 6.55pm on a Sunday evening? Why?

Yes I do, as there is a watershed for a reason, films and shows that are specifically unsuitable for children are shown after his time to make sure that children can not happen to come across them as it is assumed that they are asleep by this time therefor by allowing wolverine, rated for having a high degree of violence, i can say that channel 4 was wrong and that they should have pushed the start of the film to at least the 9 pm watershed.

5) List five of the sections in the old Press Complaints Commission's Code of Practice. 

Section 3: Privacy

Section 4: Harassment
Section 6: Children

Section 9: Reporting of Crime

Section 16: Payment to Criminals

6) Why was the Press Complaints Commission criticised?

lack of statutory powers means that when a newspaper has been found to breach the rules, the best a victim can hope for is an apology, which often does not get sufficient prominence in the paper. newspapers seem to fly in the face of the rules on a pretty regular basis and that very little is done to

stop them. For example, on Sunday 28th September, 2014, The Sunday Mirror published a story revealing that the Conservative MP Brooks Newmark had sent explicit pictures to a woman that he believed was a public relations professional. By exposing such behaviour in a politician, The Sunday Mirror can claim to have performed a public service. Statutory rules about subterfuge and intrusions into people’s private lives might have prevented such a story from being put together.

7) What was the Leveson enquiry and why was it set up?

In January 2007, Clive Goodman (the royal reporter of the News of the World newspaper) and Glenn Mulcaire (a private investigator, employed by Goodman) were imprisoned for illegally intercepting phone calls connected to the royal family. At the time, the News of the World claimed that Goodman was a rogue reporter, working alone but it emerged during the Leveson Enquiry that phone hacking was much more widespread throughout the industry. Representatives of the newspaper industry including Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre (Editor of the Daily Mail) were called to give evidence. Ian Hislop argued that a new regulator was not required but that journalists who break existing laws should be prosecuted.

8) What was the PCC replaced with in 2014?

On 8th September 2014, the PCC was replaced by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). This new body (like the PCC) has been set up by the newspaper industry itself and it’s code of practice is essentially the same as the code administered by the PCC.

9) What is your opinion on press regulation? Is a free press an important part of living in a democracy or should newspapers face statutory regulation like TV and radio?

I think that newspapers should be regulated ton an extent, there a certain things that are just outright illegal and the company should be held liable if they had knowledge of it while other things like privacy and autonomy should be heavily respected by these industries and regulated if by where that person does not wish to be reported on. 

10) Why is the internet so difficult to regulate?

The internet is ever changing and always moulding into new shapes that can change a lot of things in a short period of time, and is therefore almost impossible to entirely regulate without removing freedom of expression and speech.