SOCIAL MEDIA MPs consider law to make Facebook etc liable in abuse cases

Again, newspaper owners are campaigning for the likes of Facebook (which profits from their content while passing back minimal revenue; is sucking vital ad revenue away from them; changes their newsfeed algorithms periodically, often losing newspapers large proportions of online readers as a result with no means for them to protest or influence this)
Guardian: Make Facebook liable for content, says report on UK election intimidation.

Theresa May should consider the introduction of two new laws to deter the intimidation of MPs during elections and force social media firms to monitor illegal content, an influential committee has said.

The independent Committee on Standards in Public Life, which advises the prime minister on ethics, has called for the introduction within a year of a new specific offence in electoral law to halt widespread abuse when voters go to the polls.
The watchdog will recommend another law to shift the liability for illegal content on to social media firms such as Facebook and Google, a legal change which will be easier once Britain leaves the European Union.
Both changes form part of the hard-hitting conclusions of an inquiry into intimidation experienced by parliamentary candidates in this year’s election campaign.
Other recommendations include:

• Social media firms should make decisions quickly to take down intimidatory content.

• Political parties should, by December 2018, draw up a joint code of conduct on intimidatory behaviour during election campaigns.
  
• The National Police Chiefs’ Council should ensure that police are trained to investigate offences committed through social media.
  
• Ministers should bring forward rules so that council candidates will no longer be required to release their home addresses.

Press power in EU referendum, history of Mail might

Great article that provides some historical context for the current, overwhelming right-wing bias of the UK press, which seemingly proved decisive in the 2016 Brexit vote. Here's a short sample - spot the Curran and Seaton book title in there ...:

There’s another consistent and important thread in the Mail’s long political story too. The Mail is a newspaper that wants power. The Mail is a player not an observer, today as in the past. It was the campaign against Stanley Baldwin’s leadership of the Tory party by Lord Rothermere’s Mail and Lord Beaverbrook’s Express in 1931 that triggered Baldwin’s famous onslaught about the proprietors aiming at power – “and power without responsibility – the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages”. These are words that could echo through the Mail’s coverage of the EU debate without a single change, as do Baldwin’s less often quoted comments that the press were “engines of propaganda” whose methods were “falsehood, misrepresentation, half-truths [and] … suppression”. 

I looked up Baldwin’s great speech this week when the Mail, unlike almost every other newspaper, put nothing whatever about the Orlando gay club massacre on its front page on Monday. By any standards this brutal attack was the main story of the day. Every other newspaper led with it. Meanwhile what was the Mail’s front-page headline? It was “Fury over plot to let 1.5m Turks in Britain”. The Orlando story wasn’t on pages two or three either. These were political priorities, not journalistic ones.

Just as with film, we need to be careful in assuming influence from a biased press - media effects is a tricky area! This is, to be fair, less contentious: when the bulk of the UK public have been exposed to decades of hyperbole and frequently made-up anti-EU stories, Euroscepticism is hardly surprising. Its that long-term impact of bias that is crucial, just as its the months and years of anti-Labour/left-wing coverage that makes it hard for the likes of Jeremy Corbyn to prosper - NOT the final editorials.

The EU referendum is a battle of the press versus democracy.

IPSO royal stamp while Impress slammed

In Publishers object to Impress's attempt to gain charter recognition you can read about the NMA (News Media Association, representing the UK press) and their 45 page response to the attempt by Impress to get a royal charter. They are not happy that this would mean Leveson proposals coming in for the entire industry (especially fines and legal fees) and point out that Impress only regulates a handful of hyper-local papers and is funded almost exclusively by one private donor, Max Mosley (who sued the Murdoch press for invasion of privacy) ... AND doesn't have a published code of conduct.

Meantime the Queen has formally complained to IPSO for the first time, a high profile seal of approval for the regulator, over the inaccuracy (Editor's Code Clause 1: Accuracy) of The S*n's page 1 lead "Queen backs Brexit".

Seems one is not amused by this.

Palace complains to watchdog over Sun's 'Queen backs Brexit' claims. 

That story has legs - The Sun are confident their story IS accurate; this could turn from being the Establishment seal of approval to a bitter, rather serious (it raises constitutional issues over the neutrality of the monarchy and, potentially, the thorny issue of protecting press sources' privacy and identity) political row. Big stakes.

The Queen versus the Sun - will Ipso back the paper's source?

Here's a third story from today (4 if you look at the trans outing post) highlighting the complexity of press regulation, and why the PCC was recognised as a failure: sportsman going to the courts, not the regulator, to seek justice, and getting a printed apology and a libel payout.

Express Newspapers to pay 'substantial damages' to Jimmy White.