Regulating newspapers: researching case studies

Today's task involves clicking on lots of links and researching. Please make sure that you make notes: you don't need to write a million words, but this information will be essential for a question on regulation of newspapers, which is frankly very likely to come up in your upcoming KA2 mock!

Introduction - starting with the conclusion

Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt argue that by and large, the regulation of all UK media is largely ineffective for a variety of reasons:

• Powerful media industries are motivated by maximising profit and securing power (Curran & Seaton), and are able to use their power and influence to bypass regulations
• Digitally convergent media technologies, for example streaming, internet piracy and difficult to regulate social media sites mean that traditional regulation is now essentially impossible
• The regulatory bodies that have been set up to regulate media are hands-off and ineffective at doing their jobs
  
  

Essentially, when writing about regulation, your conclusion will usually be that the regulation of the [x] industry is largely ineffective.

IPSO - the Independent Press Standards Organisation 

Click here to find resources appropriate to IPSO. 

(only the link to IPSO's code of practice still works, so don't worry about the other link)

Task 1 - Make notes on the IPSO code of conduct. What do newspaper editors have to think about when including stories? The following headings may help you

• Invasion of privacy
• Grief
• Self-harm and suicide
• Racist and discriminatory language
• Crime
• Reporting on children

Regulation in context: the News Of The World phone hacking scandal

First, watch this short (five minute) news broadcast that concisely explains what the phone hacking scandal was all about

Then watch this one, which goes in to more detail, several years on

Task 2 - make as many notes as possible on the News Of The World hacking scandal. What happened, who did it, where did it happen, why did it happen?

As a result of this incident, IPSO was formed to replaced the PCC. However, IPSO's guidelines are almost identical to the guidelines set out by the PCC. Why would so little change?

Criticisms of IPSO

Click here to find a link to a valid criticism of IPSO

Check out this short article by Mark Dixon which outlines some more issues and criticisms of IPSO's regulation of The Daily Mirror, as well as the hands-off method of regulation that IPSO operate.

Task 3 - in your notes, online the criticisms that exist about IPSO, and the regulation of newspapers in the UK. Why is it so hard to regulate the UK news industry?

Looking for trouble 

Now you know a little bit about IPSO, pick an online newspaper (eg The Sun, The Mirror, The Star, The Express... frankly tabloids will work better for this task) and complete the following task

Task 4 - make screenshots of articles that may breach IPSO's guidelines. Invasion of privacy is the easiest one to find here. How and WHY does this article breach IPSO guidelines? See how many you can find!

Bonus tasks

Here are some more tasks you may or may not have already completed. They're all importnant, so check them out!

Political ideology

UK newspapers: how representations reconstruct reality

If you are NOT in P block, or you just missed the lesson, then check out THIS post on a time when the Daily Mirror broke IPSO guidelines so significantly, IPSO had to step in! And... ask them to print a very small apology...