TWITTER Beckham ignores IPSO over Mail kids intrusion

(lord) John Prescott did it, forcing the Sunday Times to quickly withdraw an inaccurate story.

David Beckham is taking the same approach, but will the mighty Mail bow to social media pressure...

The PCC and now IPSO face being ignored by those powerful enough to have a social media, especially Twitter, presence sufficient to impact on public opinion.

The Mail, the most complained about paper of all, not only ran pictures of Beckham's 4 year-old daughter, contravening the Editors' Code, they also criticised their parenting.

Now this is the same paper that rages and fulminates against the nanny state itself turning (ninny) nanny, a similar state of hypocrisy and cant to its endless moral panics over sexual content in broadcast and other media ... which it gleefully, salaciously features in large, multiple pictures (not forgetting it's notorious sidebar of shame).

Obviously as the Beckham girl is an elected official with an important influence on our democracy ... Hmmm. Okay, so the legal public interest defence is out, unless you re-heat the fatuous line Murdoch has used for decades (if the public chooses to buy papers with this content, they're interested and the market should cater for them), and Richard  Desmond trotted out at his cringeworthy Leveson appearance ("ethics?").

The Editors' Code, as the Mail will know, doesn't provide a public interest exemption for the children clauses.

Sterling work from the Mail then. Beckham would have a good case if he took it up with IPSO, but tweeted instead. Neither the Mail nor press self-regulation come out of this looking good.

'No right to criticise': David Beckham hits back at Daily Mail coverage.

BBC cuts by government a Murdoch plan?

An incendiary post by Jukes (via a tweet by Nick Lacey, well worth following), though can anyone informed about the media landscape really be surprised at this apparently ongoing relationship between the Murdochs and a government/party when they both share a core neo-liberal, low tax, 'free market' ideology?

I've often blogged on the right-wing hostility towards the BBC and PSB generally, and how the sustained flak both from right-wing papers and politicians (often quoted in such coverage to beef it up or keep a story running) has looked ever more likely to finally down the BBC as a publicly funded large-scale broadcaster.

Jukes takes this point a step further, writing about an actual deal between Murdochs and senior Tory government ministers to work together to kill off the BBC as an organisation able to compete with the likes of Sky.

This is a short extract - its worth reading more.

As I've detailed in my 2012 book, [T]he Fall of the House of Murdoch, the plan to shrink the BBC by 30% was part of a four year dance between Cameron, Osborne and James Murdoch, as he vied to cement his succession at News Corp by buying the whole of BSkyB, and amalgamating News International and Sky in a digital hub at a new base in Isleworth.  

Called Operation Rubicon, the deal would have sealed the Murdoch family as owners of Britain's most lucrative TV channel and its biggest newspaper group - a virtually unassailable position in the media landscape. Their only real (non commercial) competition was the free news service provided by the BBC both in broadcast and online.

Read more.

Jukes' book.

FILM MPAA R rating as commercial kiss of death

'Many cinemas refuse to show R-rated films and they tend to struggle at the box office.'

Nothing new or startling here, just a handy direct quote on this point  - that as many major retailers and exhibitors essentially boycott R-rated films (likewise CDs with the explicit lyrics 'parental advisory' sticker), producers are heavily incentivised to get lower age ratings. My past posts on the impact of BBFC 18 ratings covers similar ground - and looks at the alleged favouritism shown by both BBFC + MPAA towards studio productions. The higher NC-17 rating is considerably worse - Miramax's Harvey Weinstein describes it as "economic suicide" (quoted in Julian Petley's Censorship)

Executive producer Gabe Hoffman, who bankrolled early screenings of the film with his own money, complained to industry magazine Deadline that, while Berg had granted some print interviews, she had turned down “dozens” of requests from broadcast news networks.

...

An Open Secret has had a tough time gaining traction, despite receiving lots of press from print publications, like the Guardian. It was given an R rating by US certification body the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Many cinemas refuse to show R-rated films and they tend to struggle at the box office. Hoffman wrote an open letter to the MPAA’s chairman Christopher Dodd, asking for the ratings body to reconsider their decision.  

“We were extremely disappointed to find our film – which discusses these issues maturely and carefully – thrown into the same category as films which display gratuitous sex and violence,” he wrote. 

“If just one single teen … finds their inner strength, and is able to escape their current abuse situation because of your decision, wouldn’t that make your time spent personally reviewing the film, and its rating, all worthwhile?”

Producers of Hollywood child abuse documentary criticise director for not promoting film.

D-notice: the unseen hand of government censorship

I've cited this a few times before, but its worth looking at individually - a great example of the often arcane nature of official censorship in the UK, bypassing the voluntary self-regulation system.

Greenslade: The D-notice system: a typically British fudge that has survived a century.

Peter Preston defends the system as great value at £250k a year: D-Notices: the best security show in town at a bargain price.

Greenslade's history of the D-Notice

The D-notice system is a peculiarly British arrangement, a sort of not quite public yet not quite secret arrangement between government and media in order to ensure that journalists do not endanger national security. 

In his official history of the system*, a former D-notice committee chairman, retired Rear Admiral Nicholas Wilkinson, explained that it “emerged amorphously across three decades of increasing concern about army and navy operations being compromised by reports in the British (and sometimes foreign) press.” 

It was finally created in 1912 in the runup to the first world war, when the fiercely anti-German press barons of the era were only too happy to prevent the enemy from accessing useful intelligence. 

At the outset, therefore, it was largely viewed as a sensible and pragmatic arrangement that did not inhibit press freedom. Editors and journalists appear to have accepted it without demur up to and including the second world war, when self-censorship was the order of the day for Britain’s press. 

At the outset, therefore, it was largely viewed as a sensible and pragmatic arrangement that did not inhibit press freedom. Editors and journalists appear to have accepted it without demur up to and including the second world war, when self-censorship was the order of the day for Britain’s press. 

The first major controversy occurred during Harold Wilson’s administration, in 1967, in what became known as the D-notice affair, thus bringing the system’s existence to wider public attention for the first time. 

Wilson accused the Daily Express and its defence correspondent, Chapman Pincher, of ignoring D-notices by revealing that the secret services were scrutinising thousands of private cables and telegrams sent from Britain without obtaining the necessary Official Secrets Act warrant. 

The prime minister called for an inquiry and set up a tribunal to decide whether Pincher had breached the system. It prompted the Daily Mirror editor, Lee Howard, to resign amid mutterings of censorship. Then, to Wilson’s embarrassment, the tribunal cleared the Express. 

But the effect of this affair had far-reaching implications. Editors were bolstered by the fact that the tribunal had underlined the voluntary nature of the system. Governments became hesitant about being overly heavy-handed about using D-notices to prevent publication that could be shown to be in the public interest. 

Four years after the Wilson fiasco, all existing D-notices were cancelled and replaced by what were called “standing D-notices”, which gave general guidance on what might be published and what should be discouraged.  

The fact that such notices were recommendations to editors, without any legal status, resulted in them being renamed in 1993 as DA (defence advisory) notices. 

One of the interesting features of the system has been the press-friendly nature of several of the officials chosen to head the committees, former senior servicemen such as Wilkinson and Colonel Sammy Lohan. 

And it is truly ironic that Wilkinson’s history was itself subjected to censorship. Five chapters had to be excised prior to publication in 2009 after Whitehall officials invoked a rule that official histories should not include matters concerning the administration in power. It is being republished with new chapters this month. Famously, editors have also got away with bypassing the D-notice system altogether by refusing to alert the committee to stories they feared might lead to injunctions. 

The Observer kept secret its 2004 revelation about a memo showing Britain helped the US conduct a secret and potentially illegal spying operation at the UNin the runup to the Iraq war.  

The result? An almost identical system but a change of name: DA-notices become DSMA (Defence and Security Media Advisory) notices. Nothing, it seems, works quite so well as a British fudge that allows the press to keep its freedom while volunteering to protect national security. 

* Secrecy and the Media: the Official History of the United Kingdom’s D-Notice System by Nicholas Wilkinson (Routledge, 2009)

Preston's reflections on the D-Notice system and changes

D-Notices, now called DA-Notices, have been around for more than 100 years – and still many people, including a prime minister waving them in the wake of Edward Snowden, remain grumpily ignorant of what they’re really about. Perhaps changing the name to National Security Notices (as just recommended by a review committee) will help Mr Cameron concentrate.

The notices are not censorship with Whitehall bovver boots. They’re an extremely light-touch, voluntary system that helps press people – often at local level – who think they may have stumbled on a story make sure they don’t sprawl full length by inadvertently reporting something that endangers British security. You ring up an amiable retired air vice-marshal in the Ministry of Defence who checks around and tells you where and if peril lies. A committee of editors and civil servants meets twice a year to monitor and discuss.

And that, essentially, is what will happen post-review too, with a few tweaks and modernisations – plus one economy to lighten George Osborne’s load. The whole apparatus, operating 24/7, costs around £250,000 a year, a bargain basement safety net. And what would happen if the system didn’t exist? More press calls to M15, who employ three staff officers to deal with media inquiries. More calls to M16, with two press officers. More to GCHQ, now with a press office and expert manager. More to the phone-answering legions of the MoD, Cabinet Office and Home Office.

I was interested to sit on the review, fascinated by the different attitudes, from draconian to complaisant, different departments of state manifested; and happy to discover the cheapest effective security show in town (or probably anywhere). Every little helps, prime minister.

ADVERTISER POWER Gawker editors quit as ad boycott threat sees article banned

Useful example of one of Chomsky's 'five filters' at work as it shows this is as true of new media as it is of dinosaur media (60s Times, NoTW closure, Telegraph HSBC non-reporting)

Just as with the case of the Daily Telegraph's Peter Oborne quitting in protest at articles critical of HSBC bank being pulled to protect advertising revenue, so we have another case which shows how the fabled free press is actually heavily influenced by advertisers and commercial considerations (so Murdoch pulled the BBC off his Asian satellite TV network Star and pulped the hardcover [expensive!] copies of Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten's autobiography when China complained, safeguarding his access to the huge Chinese market, and ensuring Tiananmen Square would get no mention, and critics of Chinese Communist rule were silenced).

Perhaps this case isn't as clear though - there are ethical considerations (though, as with the UK press using the public interest defence this may be simply convenient to mask the real commercial calculation?):

Gawker Media’s top two editors resigned from the news and gossip site on Monday, in response to the company’s decision to remove a controversial post. The post, published last Thursday, concerned a publishing executive who is married to a woman and who allegedly attempted to book a gay escort. 

The post was described by some critics as a form of blackmail and widely condemned in the media. At least one advertiser put ads on hold in protest....Gawker’s founder Nick Denton defended his decision to take down the post on Monday and said that the managing partnership should not make editorial decisions. He took full responsibility for the removal of the post.  

“Let me be clear. This was a decision I made as founder and publisher – and guardian of the company mission – and the majority supported me in that decision,” he said. “This is the company I built. I was ashamed to have my name and Gawker’s associated with a story on the private life of a closeted gay man who some felt had done nothing to warrant the attention.”

Gawker's top editors quit in protest over removal of a controversial post.

ADS AUSTRALIA Fanta app targeting tweens banned

Australia has a voluntary self-regulation code on marketing junk food to under 12s, part of its response to the obesity crisis sweeping the Western world.

The contrast with the UK is stark: the Tory-led coalition government rather preposterously set up an advisory panel on food health regulation dominated by the food industry. Naturally enough, this has seen little movement on marketing or producing junk food.

So to see major corporations pull an expensive TV ad and app campaign is an intriguing example of seemingly robust self-regulation.

Fanta ad and app pulled for breaching guidelines on advertising to children.

A TV commercial and an iPhone app for the soft drink Fanta has been pulled after the Advertising Standards Board deemed its cartoon-style “Fanta Crew” characters were directed at children as young as nine. 

Under the self-regulation of advertising rules, junk food may not be advertised directly to children under 12. One 450ml bottle of Fanta has about 14 teaspoons of sugar. 

The commercial featured animated characters known as the Fanta Crew at the beach and riding rollercoasters while talking about the great taste of Fanta which to them is like an “awesome ride”, a “bubble explosion” and makes them feel like “busting out to my favourite beats”. 

The Fanta Fruit Slam 2 app and the Fanta “Tastes Like” TV ad were designed to sell an unhealthy product which “should not be promoted to children,” Jane Martin from the public health advocacy group, Obesity Policy Coalition, said on Wednesday.

BBC In-depth 2015 analysis of its likely future

I've blogged in some depth and detail on the Beeb myself: this article is a good starting point if you're new to the debates around PSB, Reithian values, and the market imperative in broadcast media.

You can't disconnect politics from media regulation. Being from The Grauniad, the writing is slanted towards maintaining a viable BBC, where a right-wing paper might advocate banning services which 'the market' or 'commercial sector' already provide - or just straight up privatisation.

The battle for the BBC.

BBC Independence 'myth' in tatters?

There have been so many, wholly predictable (I did just that before the election!), big news stories about the free market/small state Tory attack on the publicly funded BBC that I've been waiting for something concrete before blogging on this again.

In the space of a week we have the story that the PM threatened to shut down the BBC, angered at what he saw as liberal/leftie bias, and Chancellor George Osbourne very bluntly questioning the future of the BBC in its current guise and scope.

Today comes action which ties together all the speculation over what Tory hostility might mean in practice. With a Culture Secretary outspoken on his attacks on the BBC before the election it comes as little shock that the Beeb has just meekly accepted an extraordinary funding cut just days after confirming the closure of BBC3 and announcing many 1000s more job cuts were planned.

Providing free licences for the over 75s is an instant cut of 20% of the budget. TWENTY percent!

WEB Right to be Forgotten attacked by BBC

Julian Powles makes a difficult argument well - defending the "right to be forgotten" created by an EU ruling against Google in Spain that gives EU citizens the right to ask Google (and other search engines) to effectively hide hits/results that highlight from their past they do not want seen.

He points out that this includes people whose names bring up crimes ... that they were acquitted of, but you don't get that info in the top results, just the more sensational coverage of the accusations.

There are clashing principles here, both enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights:

• freedom of speech
• right to privacy; a private life

Why the BBC is wrong to republish ‘right to be forgotten’ links.

ASA enforce OfCom rules on alcohol, slam MTV

Having generally not blogged on ASA, along come two useful rulings in one day - the rejection of complaints about the 'beach body' ad (albeit with some restrictions imposed), and now this: MTV sharply criticised for the high proportion of alcohol ads during the Geordie Shore slot.

That oh-so-familiar theme of protection of children is to the fore once more...

MTV argued that the show is "clearly" an adult show, but ASA data rather straightforwardly contradicts this by revealing the high proportion of under-18s forming part of the audience.

Of course the brands advertising their alcoholic goods in this slot would deny this - it is outlawed after all! - but access to under-18s is surely an attractive element of the audience for these advertisers? Furthermore, it would be odd if MTV hadn't provided their ad sales agency with detailed demographics of the audience; advertisers, and the buying agencies who negotiate fees and place their ads, will always want to know who they're spending money to target - if you're selling a stairlift, retirement homes or pensions you're hardly likely to want to spend money on ads during a youth-oriented show!!!

Read the full article - link below the line.

ASA Beach Body Ready ad cleared; inoffensive???

Interesting case that sparked a large petition, and a defacement campaign that went viral - but the advertising regulator the ASA ruled the ads were within the rules and so needn't be removed.

Protein World's 'beach body ready' ads do not objectify women, says watchdog.

Met Police inventing regulation off the cuff?

Don't confuse the IPCC with the PCC, though the CC is the same its the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

This is an example of how the police and those who can afford lawyers and court cases can severely limit the freedom of the press, quite separate from any formal media regulator.

IPCC rejects appeal over harassment warning to newspaper reporter.
IN A NUTSHELL: A convicted fraudster managed to get UK police to ban a London newspaper (local, not national: Croydon Advertiser) from questioning them, with a legal anti-harassment banning order. This is Roy Greenslade's commentary - he is not happy...

Comment: This decision by the IPCC is a disgrace. Davies acted as any reporter worth his or her salt should have done. He approached a convicted person and, when rebuffed, he did no more than send a follow-up email. This was not harassment. It was journalism.  

I’ll tell you what harassment is. It occurs when a group of police officers raid a reporter’s house in the early hours of the morning because she is suspected of paying someone to obtain stories in the public interest and then place that journalist on police bail without charge for months on end. 

Gareth Davies received that notice for doing his job, just as the Sun’s Whitehall editor, Clodagh Hartley, was arrested, charged and declared innocent at trial for doing hers.  

IPCC? I wonder if that word “independent” before PCC really means anything at all.

Music Video regulation: collected articles

I'll use this post to draw together links on this topic - use the tag and you'll find earlier posts on this, and I will be separately blogging more on this. Its a useful case study as it brings to the fore so many issues:

• Globalisation: UK regulation only to (compulsorily; likes of VEVO are volunteering theirs) apply to videos produced in UK?
• Digitisation: with YouTube's weak controls as just one example, do we really think this block digital t(w)eens from accessing these videos?!
• Politics and moral panic: this is a convenient, socially conservative issue on which the government can win favour from the right-wing press, just as was the case with the 80s 'video nasty' campaign
• Gender: is there a risk of penalising and continuing to render taboo female sexuality? OR is this an important corrective to the pornification of culture?
• Children: you can't decouple this from the digitisation and gender issues above. Should we be concerned that government gets to influence what is released/accessible in popular culture? Could such powers once granted spread beyond the initial, explicit intent? Is there research into effects to back up the need for this regulation?

ARTICLES FOR FURTHER READING:

Press Recognition Panel tour reminder of statutory power as Leveson outcome

See http://pressrecognitionpanel.org.uk

This has been generally overlooked, but there was a partial statutory element to the Leveson settlement agreed in parliament. Publishers who do not sign up to a regulator passed as meeting the requirements for royal charter (28 criteria to fulfil) are open to 'exemplary damages' in court judgements.

From PRP homepage.

Those who do are at risk of much smaller penalties.

OfCom's power to levy multimillion fines and remove licenses (and the BBFC effectively has a 'licensing' power for distribution and exhibition) has been a sharp contrast to the toothless press regulators. This hitherto obscure legislation could change that - and could see the likes of the Guardian consider signing up to a Royal Chartered regulator.

Impress is seeking this recognition; IPSO has repeated that it is not.

YOU can attend public meetings on a UK 'tour' by the PRP; see Greenslade's article for details.

Press Recognition Panel launches its consultation process.

Press regulation’s tortured history since the Leveson report has reached a new phase with the launch of a consultation process by the Press Recognition Panel (PRP). 

Readers who have forgotten that the royal charter remains in force, despite the formation of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), may need a reminder here: the PRP, which came into being in November 2014, is the body that will decide whether press regulators meet the recognition criteria recommended in the Leveson report. 

Ipso, which was set up by some of Britain’s leading newspaper and magazine publishers, has let it be known that it will not seek recognition. But the PRP is forging ahead, as required by the charter. There are major groups that have not signed up to Ipso - including the Guardian, Financial Times and the Independent titles - plus a plethora of smaller publishers. 

And it emerged at the first of several public consultation sessions, staged at the London School of Economics on Tuesday evening, that a nascent alternative press regulator, Impress, is likely to sign up several of those small publishers. 

It appears that under the terms of the crime and courts act many hyperlocal outfits would be deemed as “relevant publishers”. So the PRP’s chair, David Wolfe QC, believes they would benefit from joining a recognised regulator in order to protect them from the imposition by courts of exemplary damages and legal costs. 

To gain charter recognition, a regulator will need to fulfil all 28 criteria and Wolfe explained that his body is currently engaged in trying to define some of those criteria that “lack clarity”.

Press bias is reflected in readers voting ... except Indie

Some useful, clear evidence of the bias of the UK national newspapers, though linking this to impact on their readers isn't quite so simple, even if the data suggests this is strong. Research looked at how the readers of different papers voted, and the link to that paper's editorial line (made explicit in 2015 for the general election, with each paper writing an editorial on how they thought readers should vote), with the left-leaning Guardian having a majority of Labour voting readers, the opposite of the right-wing papers with majority Tory voters.

The Indie advised its readers to vote for the right-wing Tory/Lib Dem coalition, but its mainly left-wing readership unsurprisingly voted Labour.

See article.