Media policy is an aspect of the media which I have always considered to be of utmost importance as part of the reason it is in place is to keep audiences protect, however it is also interesting to look at the political implications in media policy, as Freedman states that media policy “is a deeply political phenomenon” (Freedman, 2008) . This is especially so during a time filled with Brexit debates, political disagreement, and controversy as it is fascinating to see how the media handles this. My main area for research was regulatory bodies, a key part of policy as these are the systems put into place which control media policy. An example of this is how television is regulated. This is through Ofcom, otherwise known as The Office of Communications, regulate both television and radio in the United Kingdom. This includes duties such as dealing with audience complaints and restricting certain inappropriate materials from either airing before the watershed, the time that adult programming is normally shown after, or airing at all. Where this becomes political is when looking at how this regulation compares to that of newspapers, arguably the most political fuelled of all traditional media sources. Newspapers are, to an extent, self-regulated, with IMPRESS and IPSO being set up to oversee this self-regulation. However, it could be argued that these regulatory bodies are just for show and are wholly ineffective. Regulatory consultant Simon Carne stated that “A young man was falsely accused by the papers of murder. IPSO did nothing. After winning a libel case his family secured only a tiny apology” (iea, 2018) which suggests that the regulatory bodies only get involved in regulation once there is a legal issue. This leads to political and ethical issues as seemingly, if no law is broken, newspapers are free to publish whatever they would like no matter how subjective and the regulatory overseers will do nothing. During my extended insight into this, I discovered a few cases of this that related directly to politics. An example of this is the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper that were forced to apologise for publishing false information regarding migrants in Paris. (ShortList, 2019) The reason that the Daily Mail were forced to apologise for this was due to misleading the public with false information, which is illegal, rather than their blatant political bias. This idea of negativity towards immigrants shows a clear bias towards a nationalist point of view, which is supported by more articles from the Daily Mail such as the article claiming that those opposed to Brexit “betray the will of the people” (imgur, 2017). This shows a clear favouring of nationalism and, as the Daily Mail did not have to apologise for this bias, this clearly shows that IMPRESS and IPSO only intervene when legally required. This raises ethical issues as, on an extreme scale, one could argue that the ability of newspapers to form a political subjectivity could lead to, in essence, propaganda and the regulatory bodies may just allow this to happen. Overall, looking at media policy, the conclusion I have drawn from my further research on regulation is that self-regulation allows room for media texts to be lenient and subjective in what they publish, yet are still regulated on a legal front. If I were to look into more depth about this subject are and write analytically, I would want to look further into the dangers that this self-regulation could pose.

References:

Freedman, D. (2008) The Politics of Media Policy. Cambridge: Polity Press. 1-2

iea (2018) Debate: Is self-regulation failing in the UK newspaper industry? [online] available from <https://iea.org.uk/debate-is-self-regulation-failing-in-the-uk-newspaper-industry/> [3 December 2019]

imgur (2017) Front pages of UK newspapers after Brexit vote [online] available from <https://imgur.com/r/pics/zEQ4V> [3 December 2019]

Ofcom (2019) What is Ofcom? [online] available from <https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/what-is-ofcom> [3 December 2019]

ShortList (2019) The Daily Mail forced to issue humiliating apology for misleading Paris article [online] available from <https://www.shortlist.com/news/daily-mail-apology-misleading-paris-article> [3 December 2019]