DAILY MAIL in RACISM row IPSO third party rejection

From Zelo-Street blog

Tad sardonic there, but whether Quentin Letts' direct question (was actor cast because he's black [is it cos he's black to paraphrase Ali G, a no more preposterous voice one could argue]) is racist or not what is also noteworthy is that ...

... Once again there's no mention (yet, at least) of IPSO, this is largely a Twitter-based row.

Guardian: Daily Mail's Quentin Letts accused of 'racist attitude' in theatre review.

----------------------------

QUENTIN LETTS THEATRE RACISM ROW -

IPSO reject third party complaint

Daily Mail columnist accused the RSC of politically correct tokenism for casting a black actor in a Shakespearean role. This quickly led to a Twitter-based argument, and in turn to an IPSO complaint. Somewhat surprisingly (to me anyway), IPSO rejected the complaint (of breaching editors’ Code Clause 12: Discrimination) as it did not come from the actor highlighted by Letts.

My surprise comes from IPSO’s apparent resolve to do better than its predecessor the PCC with third party complaints (ie, someone other than the subject of press content complaining), which had been repeatedly and specifically highlighted by the Culture Select Committee as a key failing of the PCC. That issue was also highlighted over the Stephen Gateley/Jan Moir case (also Daily Mail, generally the most-complained about paper).

PCC IPSO effectiveness the arguments FOR

A bullet-pointed, abbreviated list; everything I refer to below is covered in more detail elsewhere in this blog and/or handouts (many of which are also embedded within posts).

IPSO
There is very little change from PCC to IPSO, but there is some:
IPSO has exercised a new power (still no sanctions if papers refuse though) to insist on front page corrections: it has forced The S*n to do this over a false claim about Jeremy Corbyn, and the Daily Express (in Dec 2016) for claiming English is dying out in schools; they have also forced The Times to do this.
The Editor's Code was revised for 2016, now including headlines within Clause 1 (Accuracy)
Part of this revision was to explicitly require SWIFT resolution of complaints.
They have increased the non-industry representation on their board
They have shown a much greater willingness to consider third party complaints, something the PCC was criticised (by the Culture Select Committee) for routinely threatening to do (The Express '311 languages spoken in our schools' story about the decline of spoken English was one example)
They have been much more assertive over website content, notably including US editions - even more notably, this includes ruling against the Mail Online, the world's leading newspaper online and the newspaper group many accuse IPSO of being run by

PCC
There are very few examples to convincingly argue that the press have been effectively regulated, but all of these points can be raised:
- the PCC consistently highlighted high 'satisfaction ratings' in their annual reviews
- despite all the contrary evidence, they did get fulsome praise from Tony Blair and David Cameron
- (and, when FINALLY responding to Calcutt's 1993 recommendation to replace the PCC with statutory regulation, the 1995 Tory gov praised the PCC)
- Prince William held a 'thankyou party' for the PCC and national editors (we'll consider this more later)
- by encouraging non-legal resolutions to disputes (ie, not the courts, expensive lawyers), they arguably made resolution more attainable for ordinary people
- a glib argument, rather hypocritically used by a press who leave to scream for state regulation of TV/film/ads/web, but still important: the press remains (notionally...) free from state/political interference; we have a 'free press' in the UK unlike many authoritarian nations (China etc)
- a linked point: it was/is self-funding: it costs the taxpayer nothing (ditto the BBFC), unlike OfCom (around £100m a year)
- the PCC argued that the numbers of cases 'resolved' itself indicated success, and that every correction or removal of article/picture proves their effectiveness
- three notable improvements from the PCC over the GCP and Press Council that preceded it: (1) lay membership become dominant; this wasn't just a press body judging the press, but also many non-press outsiders (2) it had a published 'Editor's Code' which set out the grounds on which complaints could be made and on which they would be judged [the PC did this in their final year, but essentially neither the GCP nor PC made the basis of judgements, or an open set of standards, known] (3) as is now accepted practice across the board for media regulators (the BBFC in particular highlights this, labelling their published information 'BBFC Insight' and specifically proclaiming this as a service for parents), the PCC publish their Code and judgements on a website, as well as detailed annual reports
There are few respectable sources who will offer up arguments for the PCC specifically, though there are more who will argue the wider point in favour of self-regulation; I recommend in particular looking for the 'Peter Preston' tag in the tagcloud. A former Guardian editor who also briefly served on the PCC, he continues to pen articles strongly advocating self-regulation, and even defending the record of the PCC. He insists that they do a better job than statutory regulators like OfCom. The PCC's website itself naturally contains useful material arguing that it is an effective regulator.

The counter-argument is overwhelming, but you mustn't make the mistake of simply ignoring the points above. Its also worth stressing that the apparent failure of self-regulation isn't a direct argument for statutory regulation: it is simply a reflection that the form and nature of the self-regulation we have had has been ineffective. The GCP, PC and PCC have all been largely reactive bodies, mainly responding to complaints (as explicitly highlighted in the PCC's very name), although the PCC did occasionally intervene when contacted with pre-publication concerns by those who would be impacted by planned articles. It also remained too dominated by press figures, despite the numbers of lay people involved. If a tougher regime, with the power to fine (as Leveson recommended, but the press rejected, and IPSO won't have), to enforce corrections within a timescale and on a page/size of its choosing, or even, as had been discussed, inflicting tax on papers who repeatedly breached the agreed standards or, like Desmond, just refused to come under the regulatory system ... then self-regulation may very well be effective.
So, before going into the many reasons for and examples of ineffective press self-regulation, do remember that this is not necessarily proof that self-regulation doesn't work - just that the style and approach of a system that, for example, ignores issues around press ownership, is (and surely will be with the not-so-different IPSO?) ineffective, as can clearly be seen by the consistently poor standards of our national press.

IPSO children rulings + web + advertisers more powerful

Pending updates, check back for more

Some links from another post:

What is the Editors' Code? Save a full copy for yourself. What does it have to say about children? What does it have to say about ownership? Advertising?Do you think this is a sufficient basis for press regulation?
Have a look at rulings - any useful cases on children?
Now have a look for Guardian reports on IPSO and children - anything to add?

BELOW: I searched the IPSO database for clause 6 rulings; 4 of the 6 most recent (on 23.5.17) complaints were against what has consistently been the most complained against newspaper (the lack of change in this clearly suggests a failing system) - the Daily Mail (and its online wing).













It can be argued that whenever anyone goes to the courts instead of the regulator this indicates a failure of press regulation. That is often true; the case of the Toploader guitarist using solicitors to get the Daily Express to agree to cease publishing photos of his child, under the guise of reporting on a celebrity couple's break up, was a clear demonstration of the failure of the PCC. Its response was invariably slow, with any resolution or judgement passed down months after publication - no use to a parent seeking to prevent further invasion of his child's right to privacy, as enshrined in clause 6 of the Editor's Code. The press, especially the red-top/tabloid press, have a long history of such breaches:



If you want to see evidence of the Mail continuing on its proud record of most complained about paper, see this detailed analysis from the TabloidCorrections website (once more, an example of more effective or at least accurate oversight than the formal regulator is an online source?) - which includes this table exposing just how few complaints IPSO actually rules on, an absolutely crucial point in judging them. If you wanted to know which paper was most guilty of Editors Code breaches, IPSO data would actually be misleading - most of their cases are just listed as 'resolved' by 'mediation', and IPSO don't make any judgement!




In the Toploader case, Richard Desmond, the porn baron who infamously asked for an explanation of the term 'ethics' at the Leveson Inquiry, withdrew the Star and Express titles from the PCC. As a voluntary self-regulator, there was no sanction or punishment for this; his papers, frequently found guilty of Editors Code breaches, had simply ceased to be regulated even under the dreadfully weak PCC system. The parents in this case had no regulator to turn to.

What about IPSO then? They have further toughened their children's clauses (6 + 7) in the Editors Code; they have also included a reference to 'quickly' resolving complaints in this revised code (recognising a key PCC failure). They're also tougher than the PCC, having forced the Times, Mail and Sun to run front page corrections. They can also point to a case where they ruled in favour of parents complaining against the Express about publishing images of their children. However, the parents were the royals Duke + Duchess of Cambridge, the same Duke who once held a party to thank the PCC for keeping the press away while he went to uni, a dubious privilege given to someone funded by the public and in line to become head of state. Even in this case the sanction was, well, pathetic: the Express had to link the adjudication (ruling) for 24 hours on its website. That'll teach them?!

Consider then the first case IPSO handled, the 'devil child' complaint by an MP, Sarah Wollaston. This fell between the end of the PCC and launch of IPSO. As The Sun eventually apologised for paying for the story, its misleading nature, and harming the child (a 4 year-old), IPSO considered the matter resolved. This has become a key theme, shared with its predecessor: if the complainant says they've been satisfied with a paper's response, IPSO don't actually make a judgement; look up their searchable database and it would be hard to know if press standards are being breached as they simply say 'resolved', offering no judgement on whether the Editors Code has been breached. Here's how pressure group Hacked Off saw this, from their 2015 review of IPSO:


You can see another mark of continuity with the PCC: The Sun got away with this. Their 'apology' was 4 sentences. On page 2 - some contrast to the front page splash and double page feature inside. There is no record of them having broken the Editors Code as IPSO don't make a ruling if 'a resolution' is reached - and lets not overlook that this complaint (from a third party, so there IS some improvement from the PCC!!!) was one of many; why ignore the rest? Were they also satisfied? (IPSO only contacted ONE complainant, the MP). They've not been fined, not been warned, not even really had to apologise - 3 sentences boasting of their fine standards before that vague apology! Why would they not do the same again? The Sun's Editors Code breaches should surely be judged recorded: they'd swiftly build up a huge record of clause 1 breaches for a start. Their record should be plastered over their front page each time they add to it with further breaches. They could be fined. Without such sanctions why should they be bothered about IPSO rulings - or, indeed, the lack of an actual ruling?!

Applying political issues

“Some media regulatory practices are more effective than others.” Discuss. [OCR June 2013]

There are many forms of media regulation within the UK market alone, and more at the supranational level and in other countries. For example, film regulation, through the BBFC in the UK and the MPAA in the US, has notable differences. The issues of concern to each regulated media industry can vary too. In this essay I will explore some of the similarities and differences between the regulation of the film, press and TV industries in the UK, with some international comparisons. This requires comparing two approaches to self-regulation, the voluntary press system (until recently the PCC, now IPSO) and the statutory film system (BBFC), with the statutory 'superregulator' of broadcast (TV and radio), web and telephony, OfCom. OfCom and the BBFC are also quangos, a significant point I shall explore. I shall also consider examples linked to the issues of protection of children and the clashing adult right to free speech, privacy, and the tensions over the democratic role of media and democratic oversight of them, including the often neglected issue of ownership.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO, the 2014 successor to the Press Complaints Commission, PCC) stands in contrast to the other two as an entirely voluntary system with no statutory power or compulsion. The long history of rebadging and relaunching the same system suggests this has been an ineffective solution. From 1694 to 1953 the press enjoyed the unique distinction of having no formal regulatory system or organisation, those being the years licenses were scrapped for newspaper publishing (removing a significant layer of political control and censorship in the process) and the launch date of the General Council of the Press. There had been wide agreement with the NUJ (National Union of Journalists) call for reforms of the press industry in 1945, but this being seen as a delicate matter for democracy, with the press conceived of a 'fourth estate' independent from politics and business, another pattern was set. No party wanted to be seen as imposing censorship on the press, attracting their powerful hostility and in all likelihood struggling to win elections with such negative coverage, so a Royal Commission on the Press was launched in 1947, above party politics as a panel of independent experts.

It reported in 1949 that a regulator was required, and that there were serious issues with concentration of ownership into too few hands, general standards of content, and the overwhelming predominance of right-wing views and support amongst the national daily newspapers (although ti did feel that much of this would be resolved by the free market once the industry had recovered from WW2. The four year gap between this and the launch of the GCP is indicative of the reluctance of the press to engage in any regulation, no matter how minimal. It was only the threat of statutory regulation via legislation that persuaded the industry to agree to setting up a regulator themselves.

Arguably very little has changed today, with both the PCC and IPSO failing to cover several newspapers. Richard Desmond decided in 2011 that he would withdraw the two national dailies his Northern and Shell conglomerate owned, the Star and Express titles, from the PCC. This was not only a cost-saving measure, as the press pays a levy to fund the press regulator (similarly to the also self-funding BBFC, it does not receive any government funding), but also conveniently avoided two of the most-complained about papers receiving any more brand-damaging judgements. When the Star used the divorce of a rock guitarist from Toploader and his celebrity wife as an excuse to print stories on and photos of their young children, the family could not complain to the PCC but instead had to go straight to court, an expensive option not open to everyone. Remarkably, there was and is no sanction for this. IPSO is also an entirely voluntary regulator and The Guardian, Indie/i and FT all refused to join and so currently exist outside the system of press regulation.

There simply is no opting out of either the BBFC or OfCom systems. OfCom is a licensing power, and has removed the license from several TV channels, including Iran-funded Press TV for repeatedly breaching regulations. That makes it a criminal offence for any TV distribution platform, the likes of Sky, BT, Virgin or even Netflix and Amazon to carry the channel in the UK. In the case of the BBFC, if they refuse to issue an 18 or R18 rating that also makes it a criminal offence to distribute or exhibit that movie, a power they have only used three times since 2010, but had used much more frequently in the past. There is an exception here, arguably a positive example of local oversight being added to a national system: local councils have the power to issue their own ratings on the very rare occasions when they disagree with a BBFC decision. This was exercised in 2000 for the then-banned 1973 slasher movie "The Last House on the Left", with those limited screenings presumably pushing an embarrassed BBFC to finally issue the film with an 18 for an uncut version the following year.

Where the regulation of film and TV has been established through the passing of laws with relatively little fuss (at least until the current government began to pursue an openly hostile approach to the BBC and C4), repeated parliamentary investigations and reports have failed to make any fundamental difference to press regulation, with no party in power willing to gamble their re-election prospects on angering a still-powerful press. A second RCP reported just a decade after the 1st that the GCP had been a failure and that the state of the press was now worse, requiring tougher measures. With the threat of statutory regulation again raised, the industry replaced the GCP with the Press Council, which itself would be condemned as a failure by a third RCP in 1977 - two versions of the press regulator condemned as unfit for purpose within little more than 20 years of the first being launched.

One potentially significant change did come from the send RCP report, a legal change to require the signature of a government minister to agree any future sales of newspaper titles. None of the now four press regulators have had anything to say about the ownership of the press, a fundamental issue without consideration of which there arguably can be no effective press regulation. In practice, in the now 50 years since this legal change not one single sale has been refused by the government. Indeed, recently released documents show that Mrs Thatcher went out of her way to illegally smooth the path for Rupert Murdoch to take over the Times newspapers in the 1980s, Murdoch being seen as 'one of us', a reliable right-winger who would promote right-wing ideas through his papers. Murdoch would of course lead one of the most significant union-busting actions of the 1980s, taking on and defeating the powerful print unions with the full force of the police made available to him.

It is a picture Curran and Seaton would recognise from the 1850s, a time seen as marking the starting point of a truly free press as the government scrapped tax (stamp duty) on papers. Marxist academics, they quote from parliamentary debate to show how undermining the flourishing radical (mainly left-wing) press, and its spreading of class consciousness and awareness of the growing trade union movement, was the explicit aim of these reforms, which has taken on hegemonic status as an unquestionably good thing.

When the phone-hacking scandal, and public outrage over the Milly Dowling case in particular, created ...

IPSO initial review, June 2015

IPSO was launched on September 8th, 2014, following lengthy disagreement amongst the (then) three major parties on how to implement the Leveson Inquiry's Report on Press Standards. Here's how the Wiki describes it - note the scepticism ('claims'):

IPSO claims to be an independent regulator of the newspaper and magazine industry, and exists to promote and uphold the highest professional standards of journalism in the UK, and to support members of the public in seeking redress where they believe that the Editor's Code of Practice been breached. The Editors' Code deals with issues such as accuracy, invasion of privacy, intrusion into grief or shock and harassment. IPSO is able to consider concerns about editorial content in newspapers and magazines, and about the conduct of journalists.IPSO handles complaints, and conducts its own investigations into editorial standards and compliance. It also undertakes monitoring work, including by requiring publications to submit annual compliance reports. IPSO has the power, where necessary, to require the publication of prominent corrections and critical adjudications, and may ultimately fine publications in cases where failings are particularly serious and systemic.

KEY BASIC POINTS:

IPSO NUJ condemn it over Hopkins discrimination ruling

The National Union of Journalists has condemned the press regulator’s decision to reject complaints about Katie Hopkins’ Sun column which described migrants as “cockroaches”.Last week, the Independent Press Standards Organisation rejected all complaints that the column, which sparked widespread anger by suggesting that Europe should use gunboats to stop migrants crossing the Mediterranean, was discriminatory on the grounds that it did not refer to a specific individual.The NUJ said that by rejecting the complaints IPSO has “thrown further doubt on its own legitimacy” as the successor to the Press Complaints Commission.Only two complaints out of more than 400 have been referred to the Sun, both under clauses of the editors’ code dealing with accuracy rather than discrimination.

NUJ condemns regulator's decision on Katie Hopkins 'cockroaches' column (Mark Sweney, Guardian, 2015)

Whilst reluctant to further Hopkins' rather crude career plan - be loudly objectionable, become the subject of media debate, be a known talking head for hire - this is a useful case study from IPSO, one which can very usefully be compared to one of the PCC's most contentious decisions. Despite being the most complained about story in the PCC's history, they found no case to case to answer from Jan Moir's (another ... delightful columnist) piece on Stephen Gately, marking the Boyzone singer's funeral by linking homosexuality with drug-taking, promiscuity and the assumption that he had AIDS!

A reminder of the Gately ruling, one which did little to bolster the public view of the PCC:

The Press Complaints Commission has rejected a complaint from the partner of Stephen Gately, the Boyzone singer who died suddenly in October, over an article by the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir.The PCC received more than 25,000 complaints, a record number, after Moir wrote about Gately's death, describing events leading up to it as "sleazy" and "less than respectable".The article, published on 16 October, six days after Gately's death, provoked outrage, with many readers expressing their anger on Facebook and Twitter. Gately's record company, Polydor, also complained.In a ruling, the commission said it was "uncomfortable with the tenor of the columnist's remarks" but that censuring Moir, and the paper, would represent "a slide towards censorship". It added: "Argument and debate are working parts of an active society and should not be constrained unnecessarily."The PCC's director, Stephen Abell said the article contained flaws, but the commission had decided: "It would not be proportionate to rule against the columnist's right to offer freely expressed views about something that was the focus of public attention."Gately's civil partner, Andrew Cowles, said he was disgusted by the article and claimed the Daily Mail had broken the PCC's code of conduct on three grounds, arguing that it was inaccurate, intruded into private grief and contained homophobic remarks.The code says that the press must avoid making pejorative references to a person's sexual orientation, but the commission said that Moir did not use any abusive or discriminatory language."While many complainants considered that there was an underlying tone of negativity towards Mr Gately and the complainant on account of the fact that they were gay, it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article," it said.

Taken from Robinson, 2012 Guardian article.

Clearly there is a VERY high barrier indeed to having any complaints on this clause upheld. As ever with the PCC and now IPSO, it is worth trying to step back and noting the point about freedom of speech; you may agree or disagree with its application here, but it is an important principle.

The NUJ are notable here ... their voice has been near-invisible in the ongoing 'debate' over press regulation.

The earlier Moir case also provides an example of commercial advertiser pressure not working to impact press content:

16 October 2009 The day before Gately's funeral, Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir writes an article that describes events leading up to his death as "sleazy" and "less than respectable". "Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one," she writes. The article provokes outrage on Twitter, with Derren Brown urging fans to complain to the Press Complaints Commission. More than 1,000 complaints are made by 7pm, causing the press watchdog's website to crash for most of the afternoon. In a highly unusual move, the Daily Mail issues a statement from Moir defending her views, while brands such as Marks & Spencer remove ads from the online version of the article.

The quote above is from a Guardian timeline of the controversy. The Mail would not be budged!

IPSO needs to look into Mirror...

THE ISSUE:

No punches pulled by Greenslade here; he's vituperative in his condemnation of IPSO's process in investigating a possible 'fishing' case that snared a Tory MP, sending nude photos to a fake female Twitter account. Greenslade is indignant that IPSO, which took up the case without a complaint (quite a change from the PCC, condemned by the Culture Select Committee for its general refusal to consider 3rd party cases), didn't interview the journalist involved, instead accepting that the (Sunday) Mirror would pass on whatever was pertinent.

SUMMARY/KEY FACTS:

The Mirror published a story several other papers, including The Sun, had turned down.

It 'exposed' a Tory Minister, Brooks Newham, for sending nude photos of himself to a journalist who posed as a young woman. He resigned once the story came out.

The journalist used nude pics of real women who had not given their permission to help entice the Minister.

Ownership, Accuracy and Press Power

TASK: In the 5:10 it takes this video to play, make brief notes on examples of a Chomskian concept that this video illustrates and the song lyrics specifically mention...

This is a case where the terminology essentially is the EAA, or at least a starting point for it. Use one of the following to find relevant EXamples (the egs I give use the Daily Mail and Ed Miliband; you don't have to use these):

1. You could try searches such as '2015 daily mail miliband' (the 2015 gets recent results: eg), 'daily mail miliband press regulation' etc (what specifically did the Mail do to try to discredit 'Red Ed' Miliband when he was pushing for a tough press regulator?);
2. You could gamble on a quick browse of the Daily Mail, the most likely source...
3. You could try the appropriate MediaReg blog tag

Please don't click on 'read more' until asked to

IPSO: Joan Smith's scathing verdict

The press is obviously awash with news of the Hackgate trial outcome, which I'll come to in time, but here's a very succinct (taking just the 1st paragraph quoted below) view on why IPSO is just yet another figleaf for press business as usual by veteran journalist Joan Smith:

The grandly named Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) is just the discredited Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in a new guise. We have been round this course many times, going back several decades, following a nearly identical trajectory: scandalous behaviour by sections of the press, public outrage, the announcement of an inquiry, followed by a new regulator which looks very much like the old.

PCC Ineffective to the end: Mail flouts ruling

Roy Greenslade notes, in typically dry fashion*, that the Daily Mail continues to show just how much (ie, seemingly not a lot!) it respects the PCC. Both it and the Telegraph were found guilty of the same Clause 1 (Accuracy) breach, falsely accusing the BBC of extravagant hotel spending (they actually got a £59 rate, half the standard rate).

Key Themes

[written in 2012]

The idea of the paragraphs below is that these could go straight into exam essays; there's no extraneous material.

The themes I cover are:

• AUDIENCE THEORY
• FORMS OF REGULATION: STATUTORY [OFCOM], CO-REGULATION [BBC/OFCOM], SELF-REGULATION [BBC/PCC]; STATUTORY-BACKED SELF-REGULATION?
• COMPARED TO OFCOM, IS THE PCC ACTUALLY A REGULATOR?
• GLOBALISATION, DIGITISATION: NEW/SOCIAL MEDIA + WEB 2.0 
  
• FREEDMAN 2012 [longer post] + HEGEMONY OF FREE MARKET IDEOLOGY
   

AUDIENCE THEORY

There is a highly confused, inconsistent and generally irrational approach taken to the notion of media effects. Much of the commentary over media controversies reflects outmoded ideas and thinking developed by sociologists as far back as the 1920s and 1930. The often German Jews of the Frankfurt and Chicago Schools partly framed their ideas from personal experience of Nazi propaganda, developing concepts such as the hypodermic syringe model (the idea that the values contained within a media text could easily influence the thinking of an audience). From the outcry over Brass Eye to the more recent fuss over Rhianna/Christina Aguilera’s flimsy costumes and sexual dance moves, there is little effort to seriously investigate how children actually respond to material deemed inappropriate. As Maire Messenger-Davies, and David Buckingham, have explored in their academic work, we seriously underestimate the sophistication of children’s responses. There is a curious link between the press and the broadcast media on this issue: the press, so viciously opposed to regulation for itself, continually seeks tighter restrictions on TV/radio content –especially BBC/C4 content! As Stanley Cohen, Martin Barker and others have shown, the press continually generate moral panics by hysterically over-reacting to and exaggerating the harmfulness of singular events. Nowhere in most press reportage (at least amongst the red-tops, tabloid and mid-market alike), is there any thought given to the long development of advancements in thinking over audiences, and the growing appreciation of the ‘active’ state of the audience. The Daily Mail exemplifies this, its crude efforts at whipping up moral panics over today’s youth, causes of cancer (in one month, as BBC comedian Russell Howard documented in the YouTube hit “The Cancer Song”, they claimed being male, female, black, white and so on gave you increased chances of getting cancer!) reflecting a simplistic view of media effects that’s little-changed from the very earliest attempts at theorising audience effects.

Its worth noting, however, that Marxist media critics are also guilty of over-simplifying the issue of audience effects. Curran & Seaton focus on political and economic analysis to construct their view of the media in a way Chomsky would recognise, arguing that it works not for ‘the people’ and the public interest in a democracy, but for the hegemonic elite and their narrow interests, seeking to convince the many to support ideas that favour the few. They don’t directly tackle the issue of how diverse audiences are, or the scope for polysemy, or negotiated/oppositional readings that Stuart Hall and other semioticians have shown an individual audience member might construct, depending on their individual background and knowledge.

See this post for the Russell Howard vid and more.

FORMS OF REGULATION: STATUTORY [OFCOM], CO-REGULATION [BBC/OFCOM], SELF-REGULATION [BBC/PCC]; STATUTORY-BACKED SELF-REGULATION?
Republic of Ireland has press self-regulation, but unlike the PCC (Desmond withdrew without sanction [punishment]) its not a voluntary regulator, its set up by statute and has legal powers to enforce its sanctions. The government does not run or appoint the Irish regulator, the Irish press does, but government power, in contrast to the wagging finger of the UK's PCC, backs up its rulings. I note this because Labour leader Ed Miliband stated to Leveson this week (June 2012) thats what he wants to see here. This is described as statutory-backed self-regulation; we currently have voluntary self-regulation.
BBC self-regulates its strategic decision-making (which channels to run, how to spend the budget etc) although, unlike the press, it is 'statutory-backed', but OfCom regulates BBC content in terms of taste, accuracy and decency: UK TV therefore is co-regulated by a self-regulator and a statutory regulator.

It seems highly likely that the future points to press self-regulation continuing: Leveson made it clear when Tony Blair appeared last week that he does not wish to scrap self-regulation. However, the idea floated by Roy Greenslade and many others, and backed this week by Labour leader Ed Miliband when he appeared before Leveson, of copying the Irish model of statutory-backed self-regulation looks likely to be adopted. The PCC's cynical decision to announce its own abolition, handily pre-empting Leveson's recommendations, will help ensure that the press can successfully argue to be allowed to continue drinking in the last chance saloon (the new PCC replacement won't have had time to be tried out the argument will go). The example of Richard Desmond, withdrawing from the PCC without any consequence, in future is likely to see a punishment of VAT being applied to such papers, effectively a huge fine.

COMPARED TO OFCOM, IS THE PCC ACTUALLY A REGULATOR?
Only in a very limited sense: its very name reveals that it deals only with complaints. Whereas OfCom proactively engages in in-depth research into various strategic areas, for example its reviews of public service broadcasting, the PCC is reactive, dealing only with complaints. Given the greatest press scandal of modern times, Hackgate, the PCC's response was worse than poor: it actually attacked The Guardian, who broke the story, for damaging the reputation of the press, and its 'investigation' into News International's operations went no further than asking a few senior figures if they knew of hacking. When told, 'no, it was just the one "rogue reporter"' (royal correspondent Clive Goodman, jailed for arranging the hacking of royals' phones), the PCC accepted the line and reported that there was no further issue. When Lord Hunt announced the PCC's plan to abolish itself in March 2012, their failure over Hackgate was seen as a key factor (though many also feel this is a ploy to pre-empt Leveson and safeguard self-regulation). At best then the PCC is only a partial regulator, and even its handling of complaints has been very poor - as the 2010 Culture Select Committee noted in their highly critical report, the PCC has the power to investigate third party complaints ("in exceptional circumstances") written into its Editors' Code but routinely refuses to do so [the schoolgirl skirt-slut eg is good eg; blogger complained + rebuffed by PCC as third party; story + pics remain on Mail website].

What about OfCom then? Currently its running a formal investigation into Rupert Murdoch. If they decide he does not fit their "fit and proper person" test (a legal test as they are a statutory regulator remember), he will be forced to sell or greatly reduce his shareholding in BSkyB - otherwise they would lose their license to operate in the UK. Given that two ex-Prime Ministers, Gordon Brown and John Major, accused Murdoch of lying in his evidence (under oath) to Leveson and to the Culture Select Committee (a criminal act) just this week, that seems increasingly likely. The press licensing system was abolished in 1694. Other than Murdoch there have been many recent examples of criminal press proprietors [owners]: Robert Maxwell (Mirror) and Tiny Rowland (Observer) in the 1980s and Conrad Black (Telegraph), just recently released from a Canadian jail. It says a lot about the corrupt relationship between press and politicians that Black was made Lord Black before his criminal conviction.

Lets take another aspect of regulation: taste, accuracy and decency. OfCom regulates both commercial TV and the BBC on this; in theory at least, the PCC regulates the press over this. The contrast is almost laughable however. OfCom issues fines for breaches of the watershed rules (eg swearing by Chris Moyles on the BBC), and issued a warning after all the complaints over Rhianna and Christina Aguilera's scantily clad [wearing v little], sexualised performances at the 2011 X Factor final, reminding broadcasters of their legal requirement to protect children from explicit material before the 9pm watershed. The BBC announced in 2009, following the 'Sachsgate' scandal, its intention to tighten up and effectively extend the watershed with bleeped swearing through to 10pm.

Its worth asking if both OfCom and the BBC (who in 2004 reacted angrily to OfCom proposals to tighten up the watershed) were responding to political pressure (the Tory Party is hostile towards both organisations)? In the 1980s the IBA and the BBC stood up to intense pressure from Mrs Thatcher to ban documentaries on Northern Ireland and 'The Troubles' (Real Lives and Death on the Rocks). The entire broadcast industry fought against the 1989 Broadcasting Act which banned the voices of Irish Republican spokesmen (notably satirised in Chris Morris' The Day Today), which was quickly repealed [the ban was lifted] when John Major became PM. Thames TV paid a heavy price though: having produced Death on the Rock, they were the only major ITV company to lose their license under the new system brought in by the 1990 Broadcasting Act. Indeed, the IBA was arguably scrapped for doing too good a job as an independent media regulator, representing the public interest and not that of the media industry or of politicians - it was scrapped and replaced by the ITC through this same Act.

Politicians learned from the example of David Mellor, the Heritage Secretary now remembered for toe-sucking his Spanish mistress wearing only a Chelsea football top after he dared to warn the press it was "drinking in the last chance saloon", not to mess with the press (Tom Watson, the Labour MP who alone kept pushing the Hackgate story in Parliament, was directly threatened by News International). It seems the TV industry and its regulators have also learned not to mess with powerful politicians. When the BBC dared to (correctly) question the 'dodgy dossier' used to justify the UK's war on Iraq a furious Labour government saw to it that both the senior BBC executives resigned (Dr Kelly's 'suicide' followed); the pro-monarchy coverage of the Jubilee by the BBC in June 2012 suggests it has lost much of its independence. As Chomsky might argue, the 'flak' (one of the five filters in his propaganda model) it received ensured it reduced its broadcasting of counter-hegemonic material. The BBC has always been vulnerable to political pressure, with the government setting the license fee and thus directly controlling its budget, and they weren't the only media organisation to backtrack from criticism of Labour's war on Iraq (advertiser pressure ensured Piers Morgan was sacked as Mirror editor over a doctored photo; he had led an anti-war campaign through the paper, which was immediately abandoned once he was sacked). Even OfCom have shown why they are accurately labelled a quango - quasi-autonomous. Even before the 2010 election, they began reducing their activities and cutting their budget in response to Tory criticisms.

As I'll discuss in more detail later, such moves are highly questionable given the digitisation of TV and radio; Playboy's UK managing director (albeit having just been fined 'fined £110,000 by Ofcom for airing "adult sex" chat advertisements that featured sexually provocative footage') is one to have argued, in December 2011 [giving such dates helps show your examples are up to date] that UK-based companies were losing out to unregulated foreign web operators and that Tivo and other 'time-shifting' recording devices rendered the watershed an obsolete concept ("the watershed is a nonsense" were his precise words). Given that pornographer Richard Desmond runs two national newspapers and C5, we can't simply dismiss his argument because of his background.

The Daily Mail, typically, sought to stir up a moral panic (Stanley Cohen's concept of distorted media coverage exaggerating the frequency and threat of antisocial actions, later explored in greater detail by John Springhall) over the issue ... but its own coverage of the X Factor final included photos more explicit than those actually broadcast! The PCC, of course, was silent on this, but blogs such as TabloidWatch and even other newspapers (Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker made the point that the Mail's website lacks any age restrictions but is filled with explicit imagery) picked up on this. This is not an isolated example [take your pick from these egs], from use of upskirt photos of the 15 year-old Charlotte Church and the "isn't she chest swell" story about her the Star ran alongside its hyperbolic [OTT, exaggerated] condemnation of C4 and the regulator ITC for allowing Brass Eye's "Paedogeddon Special" to be broadcast, through to the "schoolgirl told 'you look like a slut in that short skirt'" article the Mail ran (with helpful pictures of the 13 year-old's thighs) in 2009, clear breaches of Articles 6 and 7 of the Editors' Code are commonplace but ignored by the PCC. A blogger complained about that last story, and was told by the PCC that as he was a third party his complaint would not be investigated.

The hypocrisy goes further: while the press attacks any proposal for tighter press regulation as anti-democratic, the red-tops (tabloid and mid-markets) incessantly [frequently] call for tighter regulation of broadcast media. The Mail condemned OfCom as toothless [see here for egs of fines issued by OfCom] over its handling of the X Factor final 'scandal' of Rhianna/Aguilera's costume, and loses no opportunity to attack the BBC, even if that requires a blatant lie to do so (eg the 2011 'story' about the BBC ditching the BC/AD descriptors which was simply untrue). As the Guardian's media commentator Steve Hewlett argued, this is typical of the Mail's contradictory approach to media regulation: attacking TV regulation as too soft, using explicit images to illustrate articles on TV it claims to be angry about - images which, if the PCC was ran like OfCom, it would not be allowed to run ... but then press regulation is an attack on democratic freedom! The Mail manages to agree with the MumsNet report (discussed below) calling for lads mags to be covered with paper bags whilst somehow ignoring its own explicit imagery, let alone that of the tabloids with their daily page three, subject to no age restriction whatsoever.

There is a further social issue here, and a further question mark over how effective media regulators are. Somewhat absurdly, in 2010 the Prime Minister commissioned a conservative, pro-censorship pressure group, MumsNet, to report on concerns over sexualisation of children through media content. Unsurprisingly, it concluded that there needed to be tighter censorship, not least stronger application of the watershed. PM Cameron welcomed the report and said he would implement its recommendations. Having stated its intention to scrap OfCom (rather suspiciously, just days after James Murdoch's 2009 Edinburgh speech, using similar words, called for the same thing) before the 2010 election, its not surprising that the Tory Party would seek to use like-minded right-wing organisations to 'investigate' the media rather than OfCom. OfCom have independently investigated a range of media issues since their creation through the 2003 Communications Act, often drawing upon academic experts (such as Maire Messenger-Davies and David Buckingham for research into children's use of the media). As Freedman concludes in his 2012 book, The Politics of Media Policy, media policy (both here and the US; he examines both) is not governed by rational thought and research but rather by political calculations. The daily revelations in Leveson reinforce Freedman's conclusions.

Indeed, we should by now have a new Communications Green Paper, but the scandal surrounding Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, and PM Cameron's links to Murdoch through Rebeccah Brooks, his former media advisor Andy Coulson and direct meetings with the Murdochs, has ensured that plans to further deregulate UK media (more than likely benefitting Murdoch yet again in the process, just as previous Labour bills also did; the 2003 Communications Act was dubbed by many as the Murdoch Act as it loosened cross-media ownership rules ... ironically, it was Richard Desmond who benefitted most from this, adding C5 to his Northern and Shell empire of porn plus the Star and Express).

We could also ask if advertisers are not in fact the de facto press regulators. When the News of the World was closed by Murdoch, it may have been a strategic move but it was the series of announcements by advertisers that they would boycott the paper that caused its closure. Its noticeable again that the public did not turn to the PCC to raise their concerns or disgust about the paper; it was campaigns on Facebook, and trending on Twitter that pressurised major advertisers to withdraw. Newspapers cannot survive without advertising revenue, as the cover price (already reduced by distribution costs and retailers' margin) does not come close to covering the production cost, never mind offer a profit margin. Its advertising that makes newspapers profitable or not. When the 1960s Times put on a large new C2DE readership it actually lost a lot of money: advertisers targeting ABC1s refused to pay any more for these unwanted readers, so the paper became ever more right-wing to try to lose these new readers. Curran and Seaton in their classic study of UK press and broadcasting, Power Without Responsiblity, argue that the conventional history of the press is distorted. The 1985 Peacock Report into UK TV directly cited [quoted] the creation of press freedom through the 1851 creation of a free market as a model to follow (stamp duty was scrapped in 1851, ending formal government oversight of the press and leaving it to the 'free market'). Curran and Seaton detail the parliamentary debates of the time which show the clear intention of using a supposed free market to limit the working-class readership of papers and undermine the prospects of left-wing papers, then enjoying an equal market share with more right-wing papers. Just as Chomsky also argued (advertisers are one of his five filters in the propaganda model), the patronage of advertisers would decide which papers would thrive and which would fail. As advertisers represent businesses generally in favour of low wages, low taxation, weak unions etc, they're less likely to favour left-wing papers. Even the third Royal Commission on the Press (1977), in contrast to its 1949 and 1962 predecessors, concluded that the right-wing focus of our press needs to be addressed.

GLOBALISATION, DIGITISATION: NEW/SOCIAL MEDIA + WEB 2.0
As UK audiences increasingly use the likes of Pirate Bay and BitTorrent to (often illegally) access TV and film content online, irrespective of age ratings, and global social media forums such as Twitter are perceived to operate beyond our laws (eg the 75,000 Twitter users who broke a superinjunction by tweeting the names of Ryan Giggs and Imogen Jones in January 2011), is media regulation relevant or even feasible in 2012? Newspapers are in steep decline with circulation falling fast as the web increasingly becomes the default news source, including many non-UK sources freely available online. As the web 2.0 theorists (not least O'Reilly, 2004) argue, the line between audience and producer is collapsing in our digitised, new media age; it could be argued that the evidence emerging through Leveson of the too-close links between politicians and press marks the end of an era. In the future will the bias of a tabloid matter as much as opinions trending on Twitter?

Twitter, and its users, are arguably already a more effective informal regulator than the PCC. When Lord Prescott (former Labour deputy PM) read quotes in the Sunday Times he knew he hadn't said, he didn't ring the paper or the PCC; he tweeted. Within two hours he'd received an apology and the article was removed from the Times website. Prescott argues that the traditional media have grown so large and powerful they no longer the democratic 'fourth estate' or public sphere function; they have actually become part of what we need protection against. He says that Twitter reaching 10m UK accounts makes it more likely that accurate information will be available to UK citizens. (It seems TV audiences are also as likely to take to Twitter as to contact the formal regulators: while the BBC got 3,000 complaints over its Jubilee coverage, there were more tweets about presenter Fearne Cotton alone - her response to "being bullied" became just as big a story, a good example of how far tabloidisation has gone [BBC pro-royal bias should have been the story, but instead the blonde celebrity was more widely covered]).

Having seen off the challenge from AtVOD, the online-TV regulator created by EU law, to also regulate the multimedia content on newspapers' websites, and given that it runs a detailed website, the PCC could be seen as responsive to the challenges of the new media age. However, it actually details only a small minority of the complaints received, and manages to ignore the daily distortions of the press, whether thats the Express telling its readers that the EU wants to merge France and the UK (not an April Fool's story!) or the Mail, as satirised by Russell Howard in "The Cancer Song" (a much-viewed YouTube clip), telling its readers that being male, female, black, white (... and many more factors over a single month in 2011) increased your chances of getting cancer. The PCC ignores these distortions and obviously made-up stories, and also turns a blind eye to the ideological bias of the press. You could argue then that its actually blogs such as MailWatch, TabloidWatch, The Murdoch Empire and his Nest of Vipers and more that actually effectively scrutinise and expose the shortcomings of our press.

[this point already covered above] There's a challenge for OfCom and the BBC here too. After OfCom's December 2011 warning to all UK broadcasters over breaches of the watershed, the BBC responded by proposing to effectively extend the watershed, stating that there shouldn't be a sharp, sudden swift to adult fare; more adult fare should be kept for 10pm or even later.

FREEDMAN 2012 [longer post] + HEGEMONY OF FREE MARKET IDEOLOGY:

Freedman 2012 compares US + UK media regulation and finds that both are dominated by neo-liberal, free market thinking BUT both nonetheless share significant gov intervention over content (FCC/OfCom’s decency rules) and markets (sets limits on market share). So, free market/laissez faire approach dominates here + US but each follow varieties of neo-liberalism says Freedman: ‘Neo-conservatism and third way politics could be said, in this context, to be two different variations of neoliberalism.’ (p.223)

He argues media policy is made according to political needs, and the might of media corporate lobbying:  ‘It is hard to sustain an argument that the development of media policy is a bounded, rational process that is open to multiple voices representing disparate interests. Instead, media policy appears to be a rather slippery process that favours those who share an ideological disposition towards free markets and free enterprise, rather than a commitment to public service and a conception of communicative activity in which profits and economic value are not the decisive values.’ (p.221)