OFCOM fine TV and radio stations for hate speech

Once again you can see the vast difference between a statutory regulator (BBFC is another example) and a (voluntary!!!) self-regulator (IPSO). Leveson had proposed a tougher regulator with OfCom-like powers, but the right-wing Tory government, generally favoured by most of the UK national press, unsurprisingly took the side of the press industry and refused to accept Leveson's tougher proposals or to allow the second phase of his inquiry. The left-wing opposition party, Labour, support much tougher press regulation (under Tony Blair they became a right-wing party, favoured by some of the right-wing press, but this has radically changed under current leader Jeremy Corbyn, and they are once more a bogeyman figure for the press).

Would the Editors' Code be so routinely flouted (clause 1 is accuracy don't forget!!!) if there was a system of fines ... and/or licensing (scrapped for newspapers back in 1694!) in place???


UK-based TV station fined for anti-Ahmadi Muslim hate speech.

MURDOCH US newspapers racist boycott

He closed the flagship NotW after a highly effective advertiser boycott threatened to spread to his US media (and with the PCC so disgraced by its mishandling of the Murdoch press' phone-hacking, condemning The Guardian for reporting it, that it disbanded itself! Some press regulator...).

Now Murdoch faces a potentially crippling boycott of his paper that once again shows how pressure from outside the formal press regulators can be much more effective than the regulators themselves.

The S*n has long been banned across Merseyside for its hateful portrayal of Liverpool fans as drunken hooligans responsible for the deaths of nearly 100 Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, eventually apologising for this decades later after official public enquiries trashed it's claims.

Now it's an unsubtle attack by the New York Post that has attracted a retail boycott. Up to 5000 Yemeni-owned outlets will cease selling the paper after what they see as a clearly racist front page attacking 1 of the just 2 Muslim Congresspersons. They say it endangers US Muslims by encouraging anti-Islam hatred.

KEY POINT: Consumer campaigns, especially pressurising advertisers with boycott threats, + distributor/retailer boycotts can be much more effective than a formal regulator.

Yemeni bodegas boycott New York Post over attacks on Ilhan Omar.