In the Media industry content produced in the UK is designed by certain codes and guide lines. These code have been written up by the main regulatory bodies. Regulatory bodies are put into place to mainly protect the public. They impose restrictions and make sure the Media stick to certain standards. Some Regulatory bodies can hold investigations and could then fine the company or order certain measures.
Here are the five Regulatory Bodies in Media.
ASA stands for 'Advertising standards authority'. ASA is a self regulating body which is but into to place to watch over and monitor the distribution of advertisements in the UK. They are in charge or regulating most forms of advertisements including billboards to small advertisements on the internet.
ASA take in thousands of different complaints every year therefor they have to make sure that advertisements that they put in place don't have any material that could offend the viewers, have any obscene material and also doesn't have false information that could be classed as false advertisement An advert has to breach the strict advertising guidelines before it is classed as harmful if so the advert with be withdrawn.
The ASA was first put into place and set up by CAP(Committee of Advertising Practice) in 1962. It was set up after 1955 when it was the launch of commercial television advertisements altogether, by 1961 they decided non broadcasters could not be trusted and this is when ASA was brought in to regulate all advertisements in the UK.
It was then in 1988 that Control of Misleading Advertisements Regulations was introduced. They gave power to the ASA which meant that if an advertisement help false information and could be offensive to viewers, they could then take legal action against the advertisers. After 2010 because of how popular the digital age has become ASA is now a widely known company. ASA now also have control over advertising displayed on videos and online.
ASA told a company called 'The Sofa King' that a slogan they used in an advert was 'likely to often' because it sounded like a certain curse word. The slogan was 'Sofa King Low' and was used in the company's strap line. When newspapers seen the advertisement they complained that the adverts slogan was offensive and unsuitable for general display.
BBFC stands for British Board of Film Classification. There job is to regulate films and decide what age group this film as appropriate for. The film is then rated for example 'U' means for all ages 'PG' means it needs parent or guardian supervision and '18' means you have to be 18 or over to view the movie. When regulating a movie BBFC have to consider what would offend the viewers. Things such as footage of 'Drugs', 'Language', 'Horror' and 'Obscene' scenes. BBFC then have to decide what age group or rating the film is appropriate for. BBFC first came about in 1912 but was first called 'British Board of Film Censors'. It was brought out by the film industry as they would rather manage their own censorship than have national or local government do it for them. BBFC regulate Films, DVDs and Some Video Games.
If you sell DVD's to underage people of the classification. You can end up getting 6 month imprisonment and fined £5,000. If you sell DVD's that dont have a classification on then this is illegal. The BBFC have to check every single film to decide whether things need cutting out or editing to make it suitable for the public to watch. If films are really bad it can be refused by the BBFC and not shown to public.
The BBFC decided to ban the release of Dutch Director Tom Six's film 'The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)' in the UK. The original film was filled with shocking and grotesque images as a man sewed three people together however BBFC still allowed it to be released uncut but at a 18 certificate.
The sequel however they said it had gone to far and it may breach the 'Publications Act 1959' this was because the focus was the character being sexual aroused at the idea or mutilation and murder of his victims.
The director was then given six weeks to appeal but it was decided even with cuts it would still breach the 'OPA'.
The Press Complaints Commission (PSS) is a regulatory body made for all British magazines, newspapers and representatives of all major publishers. The PCC is a voluntary regulatory bodies and is funded only by the annual levy that charges newspapers and magazines. The industry class them selves as self regulating as the PCC has no legal powers. The PCC has had a lot of criticism over the lack of action in the News of the World hacking's. The Prime Minister David Cameron especially as he called for it to be replaced by a new system in july 2011.
The precursor to the PCC was the 'Press Council' this was again a voluntary organisation that was made in 1953. The aim for this organisation was to keep high ethical standards in journalism. However by the 1980s severla newspapers breached and people were unsatisfied with the effectiveness of the 'Press Council'.
It was reviewed whether self-regulation should be carried on however in 1990 a report was written with a full code of conduct should be given 18 months to prove whether its effective. The press didn't want this to happened and wanted to avoid external regulation so they established the Press Complaints Commission and its Code of Practice.
Any member of public can bring a complaint against any publication that has volunteered to keep to the code of conduct. Then members of the commission will review the complaint to see whether the code has indeed been breached, if so they then suggest measures of correction. Some of these include public apology's or printing a factual correction. However the Commission never imposes financial penalties on the newspapers.
There code of conduct is;
- Acuracy - all information published must be acurate. This includes pictures.
- Opportunity to reply - opportunities to reply when reasonably called for.
- Privacy - Respect for private life. No Photos on private property.
- Harassment - No Persistent phoning, photographing or trespassing.
- Intrusion into grief - Inquiries made with sympathy and care.
- Children - No school intrusions no photos issued without consent under 16.
- Children in sex cases - under 16's should not be identified both victims and witnesses.
- Hospitals - Must obtain permission from executive before entering non public areas.
- Reporting a crime - Relative's of offender shouldn't be identified without consent.
- Clandestine devices - material from hidden devices can not be published or unauthorized removal of documents on phones ect.
- Victims of sexual assault - Can not identify the victims or detail that could reveal the assault.
- Discrimination - No prejudicial reference's to race, Colour religion, gender, sexual orientation disability or physical or mental illness.
- Financial journalism - They must not write about financial information.
- Confidential sources - Moral obligation to protect confidential sources.
- Witness payments - No payment or offer to a witness who could be expected to be called as a witness.
- Payment to criminals - Payment for stories or information that exploit a particular crime or glorify crime in general.
Many breeches have been made by magazines. For instance the Leverson inquiry with had many witness's celebrities who had experienced phone hacking and false information published by the News of the World. A private investigator called Glenn Macaire was jailed for 7 month for phone hacking the Royals.
The Office of Communications also know as Ofcom is the biggest government approved regulatory authority for broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries in the UK. Ofcom was made in 2002 and then received its full authority from the communications Act 2003.
Ofcom has a powers across TV, Radio, telecoms and postal sectors. it represents the citizens and consumers interests by promoting competition and also protecting public from what they would class harmful or offensive material. Ofcom launched on the 29th December 2003 and then took over the duties that five other regulators where responsible for;
- The Broadcasting Standards Commission.
- The Independant Television Commission.
- The Office of Telecommunications (Oftel)
- The Radio Authority
- The Radio Communications Agency.
- The Postal Services Commission.
Ofcom are able to give fine's to companies which breach the telecom's rules of up to 10 percent of their relevant turnover. When Ofcom give out penalties they take many things into account first. For example the degree of damage the duration of the contravention. Whether the regulatory body gained anything or if they have a history of contraventions All these are taken into account before given out the penalty and how big the fines are.
Ofcom fined TalkTalk and Tiscali UK £3 million after they incorrectly billed tens of thousand of their customers for services they had not been receiving. The companies then received thousands of complaints. However not only had they been wrongly billing their customers but also people who had also closed their accounts with them. This was seen in over 62,000 cases and that was between January - November 2010. They were then issues a legally binding notification in 2010. However although they did take action and made changes in the companies management systems they still managed to again incorrectly bill over 3,000 Consumer's between 2 December 2010 and 4 March 2011.
The Mechanical Copyright protection Society also known ask (MCPS) was first establised in 1924. It is a organisation made not-for-profit which represent over 17,000 composers, songwriters and music publishers. The whole purpose of this organisation is to collect and then give out the royalties. The organisation will make agreement's on behalf of its members, with people who want to record and distribute products containing copyright music fees and then collecting the licence fee for this use. Its them passed on to the members as mechanical royalties.
MCPS is know to be a collecting society as its job is to collect money from music users in the UK who will record music into TV or Radio programme's websites, films, CD's and so on. They will collect royalties by a issuing license's to music owners in respect to the mechanical copyright in musical works.
The Copyright Act is all about giving the owner of material control of restricted acts to there work, in this case musical work. The Mechanical right as administered by MCPS consist of two rights;
- The right to copy the work.
- The right to issue copies of the work in public.
This will mean that every time that work is either copied or a copy is issued out to the public, royalties are given from the licensing and then given to the members.
Performing Right Society also known as (PRS) was first founded in 1914 and is a UK Copyright collection society and performance rights organisation that collects rights management for music works. PRS was formed in 1997 as the MCPS-PRS alliance this brought together two collection societies. PRS Music licenses and collects royalties on it members musical works whenever they performed publicly when recordings of them are broadcasted or even just played publicly in the UK and globally through its partner network.
The principle sources of PRS revenue are: music that has been transmitted either the television, radio broadcast, music performed at live gigs, concerts and also theaters.
There are around 350,00 UK businesses that have some point paid for a licence from the PRS but some don't need one:
- Inpatient and treatments areas in hospitals.
- Medical day centers.
- Residential homes (in most circumstances).
- Civil wedding ceremonies and partnership ceremonies.
- Lone and home workers.
It was in 2007 the company PRS accused and then took a car servicing company in Scotland to court as it was alleged that workers in the shop were listening to the Radio and allowing music to be heard by the customers. Also they accused 11 police stations who didn't obtain permits to play music and then sought out an injunction and then payments for damages.
Regulatory Bodies issues
What is Monopoly?
As a you child you have probably played with the game 'Monopoly'. However in the real life Monopoly is what happens when a certain industry has only one producer of certain products. For example if you wanted to buy something like a TV and there was only one shop that sold that TV that shop would be considered to hold the monopoly. The bad thing about this is that there is only one set price without any consideration for competetive priceing. The whole idea of Monopoly is that there are no competitors.
A good example of is Monopoly is Rupert Murdoch. He owns a extremely large portion of the Newspapers. In the UK he owns 'The Sun' 'The Times' and the 'The Sunday Times' but also many others all other the world. Because of the regulatory bodies they will not alow Ruport Murdoch to buy into any more papers. The reason for this is because when owning a paper you can then have controll over what people read and then control over there opinions. for example when the voting for the govrement comes around if there was a certain party that Rupurt supports he can then give them as much publicity as he wants. The best point of having lots of different papers to read is because people prefer diffenent things. If Rupurt owned all the papers then they would all contain the same stuff.
