WEB Latest Twitter arrest rxposes unregulated web myth

Man who confronted Muslim woman to 'explain' Brussels attacks arrested http://gu.com/p/4hztg?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

PRIVACY PRESS LAW courts doing IPSO's job?

HUGE story, and I'll develop this post in time for 2016 exams as a core case study.

Whilst wider than the complaints-based PCC, IPSO's remit is typically narrow, one limitation on its potential to be an effective, inactive regulator. It will not, for example, consider ownership - one of Chomsky's five filters in the propaganda model.

A judge has just dramatically toughened press regulation through a court case.

Such are the profound implications - what future is there for the tabs stripped of the kiss and tell? - that this case is bound to run to multiple appeals, with The Sun the paper injuncted from publishing and Murdoch bound to resist a ruling that rips the heart out of his cash cow's core appeal.

He'd be wary of going beyond UK courts though, with EU rulings on privacy notably tougher on the media's freedom to publish and sympathetic to the individual's right to privacy - one of the reasons the Murdoch press is so vigorously, viciously anti-EU (not exactly a democratic position - but hey, while there's no regulator to look at ownership or to seriously consider biased reporting...).

Whilst it's always tempting to celebrate any diminishing of tabloid power, there is a major democratic issue at stake. UK laws, and court rulings form law until Parliament decides to pass statutes overriding these, have a tendency to be applied far beyond their original purpose.

The Murdoch-led twisting of the public interest defence into the free market 'whatever the public is interested in' was attacked by Calcutt and Leveson, and the Culture Select Committee to boot.

Nonetheless, ANY limitation on press freedom needs to be very carefully assessed and scrutinised. For this celebrity couple today read a politician tomorrow ... centuries of progress following the abolition of the Star Chamber and the later Fox's Libel Law reforms being reversed; the rich and powerful being handed a new gag on unfavourable media coverage?

As I said, a HUGE story...

The injunction is back: entertainer blocks extramarital affair story http://gu.com/p/4hn8m?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

HISTORY OF PRESS REGULATION links

PCC history;
Buzz timeline 1953-2013;
LE-ac-uk multiple links (this is for an initial summary of historical background);
HistoryandPolicy-org Seventy years of the unsolved press regulation problem;
Parliamentary Report: press regulation since WW2;
Wiki: history of British newspapers;
Wiki: history of UK freedom of the press;
NewsMedia-UK: history of British Newspapers;

BBFC PEGI EFFECTS Manhunt for flawed audience research

Do video games make children violent? Nobody knows – and this is why.

DISCRIMINATION Matrix director accuses Mail of trans outing pressure

Let's be very clear: the Mail has put out a very specific denial. Nonetheless, a useful story as it puts the discrimination clause into focus in 2016, with a useful reference to a 2013 case when a coroner criticised the paper for its coverage of a trans teacher who committed suicide after being attacked in a Richard Littlejohn Mail column.

Furthermore, it highlights the complex globalised nature of the supposed UK press - this was a story about the paper's US website; difficult for IPSO to get involved with.

Daily Mail denies trying to force Matrix director to come out as trans woman http://gu.com/p/4hdkc?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

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.

BBC OfCom switch boosts political control?

Peter Preston, Guardian grandee, provides a solid run through of the issues around political appointments to PSB broadcasters boards (he notes an experienced privatising executive has just been appointed to C4 as lobby briefings make it clear the Tories want to sell off C4, this isn't just a BBC issue), including some historical examples.

Welcome to the Whittingdale Broadcasting Corporation.

BBC huge public survey says gov should back off

A government survey has seen its plans to shift BBC regulation to OfCom and to downsize the corporation rejected by overwhelming numbers in an exceptionally large public response.

It's media rivals, unsurprisingly, were all for both! Sky, for example, was full of praise for the wonderful job OfCom does!

Just 4% of public agree Ofcom should regulate BBC.

UPDATE - from August 2016 UKIP leadership debate:

MEP Bill Etheridge, who suggested the national broadcaster should be sold off.Etheridge said: “Ladies and gentleman, I’m so glad we have coverage here for this tonight because I know how much they are going to enjoy this: I want the BBC privatised. We pay taxpayers’ money to have leftwing propaganda rammed down our throats.”He said the BBC should “stop picking our pockets to feed us this stuff that we don’t want to hear”.

FILM Kenya declares Netflix threat to morals

A clumsily sub-edited article, misleadingly fusing separate points on terrorism and moral values raised by Kenya's national film censor, but useful nonetheless.

Cinema certainly is an expression of soft power; Gramsci's theory of hegemony argued that power is maintained as much through cultural dominance as physical force. Hollywood has long been a force for cultural imperialism globally, spreading US cultural values and political ideology, and promoting the US as the world's superpower.

Kenya's film censor has been frustrated by a ruling that Netflix cannot be regulated like broadcast TV as it is TV over Internet.

There is a wider point here: there is no watershed on Netflix, Amazon Prime and the rest of the on-demand streaming services.

Kenya's film censor: Netflix a threat to 'moral values and national security' http://gu.com/p/4g2f4?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

CHINA muzzled watchdog, foreign journos expelled

See also  Xi Jinping asks for 'absolute loyalty' from Chinese state media

http://gu.com/p/4gqjp?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

For all the very legitimate complaints about the democratic deficit that the billionaire, conglomerate private ownership of UK, US, Italian and other Western press industries creates, and the weak regulation of these corporate mouthpieces, the situation in China (and Hong Kong) is starkly worse.

The expulsion of a French journalist from China this week sparked worldwide headlines, though little real protest as the Western powers grovel for a share of Chinese trade and investment, and seek to avoid upsetting a touchy Chinese regime. The classic Fawlty Towers line of "don't mention the war" (to a German customer) becomes don't mention Tianamen ... or Tibet ... or pretty much anything that will risk upsetting the economically powerful regime.

Delve into this report and you'll find details of papers closing, punished for being too liberal, journalists quitting en masse as their freedom to report shrinks under an authoritarian new president, one jailed for 7 sarcastic tweets, Hong Kong's press seeing ownership switch to regime supporting hands, in apparent breach of the treaty with the UK ...

China's young reporters give up on journalism: 'You can't write what you want' http://gu.com/p/4ffz5?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

FILM FRANCE Lars von Trier ban part of new censorship

TBC - The rise of film censorship in France, with the 16 rating of Antichrist removed by a French court following a campaign by a religious group making its screening illegal until it  receives a new rating - a similar system to Britain's. A lesbian drama also lost its 12 rating and is also placed in limbo.

Lars von Trier's Antichrist banned in France seven years after release http://gu.com/p/4gcym?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Press Distortion/Inaccuracy: Mail + Cancer scares

At some stage we'll watch Russell Howard's song about this, but here's a good, detailed article on yet another scary tale of something everyday that causes cancer from the fun-loving Mail:

Dacre, the Mail and cancer

 

NB: This contains a mild use of language at the very end

IMPRESS signs up obscure titles but could grab power

IN THIS POST: Peter Preston savages Impress' credentials and strategy; despite only signing up 4 micro-local titles they could bring about statutory powers that include draconian fees for newspapers whether they have signed up to Impress or not. You'll find further Impress resources at the bottom of this post. Read more on press regulation on the Media Guardian here.

Impress boast of their actually humble beginnings. Note the new domain: http://impress.press/

Peter Preston's weekly column is mostly on the Saville case, and is useful for highlighting the consequences of the incessant political pressure on the Beeb.

However, its the fiery, furious final two paragraphs that grabbed my attention, coming to a conclusion that hadn't occurred to me. Greenslade had reported that Impress was to announce its initial sign-ups, but when this proved not to be the IPSO refuseniks like The Guardian I switched off.

Preston flags up that despite the absurdity of Impress' starting slate, four micro-local titles, this could see the severe powers to fine newspapers, whether signed up or not, heavy amounts. In his own words:

EU sanctions to silence Chinese whispers?

Another example of how the EU impacts on media regulation (AtVod and PEGI are regulators who exist primarily as a response to EU regulations). Excerpt:

The Paris-based press freedom body, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has called for European Union sanctions against China’s main TV broadcaster and its official news agency over the Peter Dahlin case.
As the Guardian reported yesterday, Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist “was paraded on Chinese television on Tuesday night to make what friends and colleagues describe as a ‘forced confession’”.
He appeared on the state-owned China Central Television (CCTV) and critical claims about him were carried by the official news agency, Xinhua.
...
In August 2014, RSF called on the European Council to adopted sanctions against CCTV following the screened “confession” of Chinese journalist Gao Yu about disclosing state secrets. Months later, at her trial, she said she made the confession under duress.
There is a precedent for EU action. In March 2013, the European Council found that the Iranian-backed Press TV had violated the right to a fair trial by their airing of forced confessions.

Full article: Press freedom body calls for EU sanctions against Chinese media.

BBC politicised by funding World Service?

This is a report that I'm sure will be reported very differently in the right-wing press (ie, most of the UK press), much of which actively campaign against the whole concept of a publicly funded PSB and engage in BBC-bashing at every opportunity.

It reports that the public oppose the 2010 change, making the BBC pay for World Service radio (previously funded by the Foreign Office as it has the explicitly political aim of promoting British government policies and undermining non-democratic regimes around the world), as it politicises the BBC.

There is also fear that the poor will be badly served and neglected by proposed changes, including moving more content online only, and clear opposition to any pay-TV (as is planned for children's TV content).

Full article: BBC risks excluding viewers by prioritising online content.