Regulation

Relates newspapers and magazines. Upholds high standards of journalism and enforce's the editors code. 

IPSO Editor's code of practice includes accuracy, privacy and intrusion into grief or shock. 

IPSO Complaint Upheld 

• Guardian article detailing alleded Julian Assange 'escape plot' to Russia was misleading, internal panel rules. 
• The Guardian's internal complaints review panel has overruled both its readers' editor and managing editor in finding a story detailing an alleged 'plot' to 'smuggle' Wikileaks founder Julian Assange into Moscow from London's Ecuadorian embassy was misleading. 

To protect children and the vulnerable from harmful materials, trauma and offensive content. These people are seen as innocent, easily manipulated and needed to be shielded from unsuitable material. 

Why do we see children in particular as needing to be protected through regulation? - Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiment

• Child sees an adult attack a Bobo doll and then the child was observed imitating this violent behaviour. 
• Bandura's media effects experiment was used for decades as evidence that children would copy violent behaviour that they saw. 
• 'Most human behaviour is learned observationally through modelling from others.' Bandura
• People have used this to demand stricter controls of the media such as violence in films and videos games. 

Moral Panic - Stanley Cohen - 'Societies appear to be subject... to periods of moral panic'. A film becomes defined as a threat to society, and then the media creates a 'panic' about this causing people to be alarmed about what might happen if these films were not banned. 

From the 60s many Conservative people in power became obsessed with the idea of 'Video nasties' - films that contain horror/gore. 

This is a time when many graphic horror movies were released, thought to have the power to corrupt audience, e.g. 'A Clockwork Orange' (1971).

Mary Whitehouse was an MP at the time who would often speak in Parliament about banning films. Many of her speeches were about the emerging technology of 'home video'. They were concerned that if audiences could buy and watch films at home then more people would be affected. 

After the Video Recordings Act 1984, the BBFC were now also responsible for films released on VHS too. They could ban films, or insist on them being cut. The BBFC could ban a film by refusing an age certificate. The BBFC examine violence, sex and nudity and self-harm amongst other things. 

The Human Centipede 2 (2011) - In 2011 the BBFC refused to certify 'The Human Centipede 2' saying it was too grotesque for an 18 certificate. The production company ended up cutting several scenes before it was sent back and given an 18 for DVD release only. 

Video games have caused a similar moral panic. 

COD Modern Warefare 2 (2009) in an optional mission asks the player to go undercover with Russian terrorists and massacre an airport full of innocent people. 

David Buckingham thinks that we now have a 'generational digital divide'. 

• This is when younger generations have a knowledge of new technologies that older generations do not. 
• Younger audiences have technology that they can access media content on without their parents knowing. 
• Many older people do not understand how young people access films or video games. 
• The people often also do not understand how to initiate parental controls. 
• Young people are 'digital natives' - people at home with technology. 

Regulation can change over time: Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960’s ‘Psycho’ was almost banned in the USA and UK, having an ‘R’ (restricted rating) and an 18 on release, the film is now a 15, with recent suggestions it will become a 12A as a recognised historically important film.

The Vietnam War

• New technology meant that people at home were seeing the horror of war during the news. 
• Suddenly scary films were seen as tame in comparison and there was a shift in what the public expected. 
• Now horror films have far more violence and gore as a result of the public's new acceptance of violence. 

• Disney are keeping their original films but they now come with warnings about the outdated views of race. This reflects how society has changed it's view. 
• This can be traced back to the BLM movement and a recent demand from audiences to include more accurate cultural representations and diversity. 
• There have been subtle changes in films like 'Splash' which have had nude scenes removed or covered up in order to change the rating of the film. 
• Some may argue that studios make changes all the time to fit in with ratings. 
• Star Wars cut out a head **** in 'Attack of the Clones' to it could get a PG rating in the UK. 
• Some argue this may be dangerous as it should that any media text could be changed by editing the original and therefore no media text is safe from history. 

Netflix has removed episodes from series due to content now being seen as offensive.

Some series have been removed entirely. Little Britain and Come Fly With Me have been removed entirely from Netflix and BBC iPlayer. This change in social regulation has even been recognised by the creators of the show. Matt Lucas said 'I wouldn't make that show now. Society has moved on a lot since then and my own views have evolved,'. 

While film studios are still free to make their own choices to a degree in the UK part of the social regulation has now become law, with the ASA making new law on gender representation. Adverts are often the 1^st to change in society regulation and the difference in ideology as they are the most quickly produced. ASA– ‘Advertisements must not include gender stereotypes that are likely to cause harm, or serious or widespread offence.’

Two television ads, one featuring new dads bungling comically while looking after their babies and the other a woman sitting next to a pram, have become the first to be banned under new rules designed to reduce gender stereotyping.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned the ads for Philadelphia cream cheese and Volkswagen, following complaints from the public that they perpetuated harmful stereotypes.

Mondelez (Philadelphia) told the ASA it was stuck in a no-win situation, having specifically chosen two dads to avoid depicting the stereotypical image of showing two new mums handling all the childcare responsibilities.

The ASA banned the ad, saying it reinforced the idea that men were ineffective childcarers.

• In 2012 the BBC broadcast a Newsnight special, investigating historical child abuse in a Welsh children’s home and trying to expose a police cover-up of the case.
• In the TV programme and alleged victim of child abuse, Steve Messham, was interviewed and told the presenter that he had been abused by a man who went on to become a powerful Tory MP.
• The show did not identify the MP by name but dropped several hints.
• Sally Bercow was found guilty of libel after tweeting that it was Lord McAlpine that was the abuser. 
• As she had more than 56,000 Twitter followers, the court decided that she should pay £15,000 in damages to Lord McAlpine.
• Plus she had to make a public apology on Twitter.

Malcom X “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” 

A free pressimplies that journalists and newspaper editors can edit content free of intervention from Government influence. More than a 3^rd of the world’s population live in countries where there is no press freedom.

The UK press has not always been self-regulated. The Licensing of the Press Act in 1662 stated that printers had to be registered and official copies had to be provided. This expired in 1695 when publishers no longer needed a licence from the government. 

Freedom of speech was only enshrined in British law as recently as 1998 when Parliament adopted the EU Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms as part of the Human Rights Act.

UK still legal bound to follow under Brexit deal. 

• Cummings admitted a family trip to the town on 12 April, his wife’s birthday, after the Guardian and the Daily Mirror had revealed he made the journey, as well as fleeing his London home for Durham with suspected Covid.

• Cummings did eventually resign in November after a No 10 power struggle ostensibly unrelated to his lockdown trips. Evans says: “It would be nice to think he finally resigned because he realised he was wrong about something, but I don’t think that’s the reason.”
• “People were angry about it because it was a strange reason to give,” admits Richard Bell, one of the town’s four Tory councillors. The saga led to one ministerial resignation; dozens of Tory backbenchers calling for Cummings to quit; a huge drop in public support for the government; and a dip in confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic, a sentiment later identified by academics as the “Cummings effect”.

A free pressimplies that journalists and newspaper editors can edit content free of intervention from Government influence. More than a 3^rd of the world’s population live in countries where there is no press freedom. This causes a problem as in those countries journalists are often imprisoned if they disagree with the Government, social media channels are not allowed to operate, non-democratic countries often control access to information and employ state-run news organisations to promote the propaganda critical to maintaining an existing politicalpower base.

In March 2002 a 13-year-old girl went missing in Surrey when she failed to return home from school.

Newspapers were desperate to be the ones that could ‘break’ the story about what had happened to her.

 Newspaper journalists at The News Of The World had hacked into Millie Dowler’s voicemails to listen to her messages.

Police and parents discovered that her previously full voicemails had been deleted and presumed she had done it and therefore that she was still alive. They were given hope.

Mille Dowler’s body was found in Sept 2002. She had been murdered by Levi Belfield and dumped in the woods long before the voicemails had been deleted.

The Guardian wrote an expose article on this. The public was outraged.

News International closed The News Of The World and publicly apologised.

The Government launched the Leveson Enquiry.

72 days of hearings over three modules

184 witnesses gave evidence

Cost £5.6m expected total cost after conclusion (source: Jeremy Hunt)

51 total victims

As a result the enquiry found that the Press Complaints Commission had failed in its job to regulate newspapers and should be shut down.

They found that Rupert Murdoch had encouraged the situation by having the staff motto ‘Take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means’

• Report suggested that we stop focusing on the harm the media might cause.

• Suggested we start to educate children about the media and teach them to regulate their content themselves.

• Suggested parents/family take more responsibility for protecting their children.

• Agreed with Livingstone and Buckingham that at the moment, parents don’t understand enough about technology in comparison to children.

Believes that the media should be deregulated and uncensored because it will help to educate people about the realities of our world, e.g. war.

He argues that we should allow uncensored images of real violence e.g. ISIS beheadings etc. because otherwise we are being protected and sheltered to the extent where we don’t know the truth.

‘If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.’

Believes that the media should be deregulated completely and there should be no restrictions on what people say in the media.

‘The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent. They control the minds of the masses.’

Shows that this power needs to be regulated by either the state or the individual.

Think the needs of the citizen are in conflict with the needs of the consumer, because protection can limit freedom. They notice that regulating media to protect citizens from harmful content can limit freedom of expression.

Technology makes regulation harder. Big companies with lots of power make regulation harder.

Traditional regulation is being put at risk by: increasingly globalised media industries, the rise of the digital media, and media convergence.

First proposed by Theresa May's government in April 2019. 

Sets out strict new guidelines governing the removal of illegal content such a child sex abuse and media that promotes suicide. 

Social media companies will need to remove and limit the spread of harmful content or face fines of billions of pounds. Sites will need to set their own terms and conditions and face fines if they stick to them. Ofcom have the power to levy unprecedented fines of up to £18M or 10% of global turnover. E.g. Facebook could have to pay a $5Bn fine for serious breeches. 

However, Adam Hadley, the director of the Online Harms Foundation says that 'Terrorists are more likely to be found on smaller platforms. Not the big tech platforms the government's proposals are targeting.'