Industry and Regulation

Industry and regulation

This week we looked at reputation within the media. The media uses regulation to control the the content which is being broadcasted to the public. Regulatory boards are put in place in order to protect the public from could be offensive, harmful or unsuitable for the desired audience. Not only do they manage what media produces produce but their are guide lines, rules and regulations and also the public can turn to these boards to make a complaint. Different media sectors have different regulations and regulatory boards who are put in place to control the content. For example, the BBFC is a British film regulation company. Their name stands for the British Board of Film Classification. They classify the age of the film to which they think is suitable for the audience. On their website you can view the different case studies which they have dealt with when making changes to the age rating of certain films. That is only one example of a regulatory board within the media.

The argument for regulation within the media relates back to the concept of political economy.

 '...we need to relate issues of regulation directly to the issues of political economy that we dealt with in the previous chapter, but also the questions about the nature of the the society we believe we should live in, and our view of the power of the media'

Thus meaning that although there is regulations put in place in order to protect the public, we may argue that there is some degree of control and that's when the power of the media comes into it. Some people may have different views on the idea of regulation. The relationship between regulation and political economy is the idea of who is in control, who has the power and where does that leave the rest of us.
However, regulation can be seen as something which is good for the public. That is what the main intentions are. For example, children's viewings.

'...broadcasters have developed and subscribed to a "watershed" policy where 9.00 p.m is regarded as the time before which programmes unsuitable for children should not be scheduled... More adult material may be shown after this time, where broadcasters will not accept full responsibility for children's viewing" [regulating the media, Thomas Gbbons, p77, Sweet & Maxwell Limited 1998, London]

Regulation is put in place within all media organisations. Regulation within photography comes under different factors. There are different rules and regulations depending on the purpose of the content of photography. The main regulatory board would by Copyright. Copyright allow protection for the work in which someone produces. Once a piece of work has been produced, they can then have their work protected by the rules of Copyright which allows their work to be redeemed as theirs only and if one is to take their work without permission and se it or classify it as their own, then copyright take legal action against this. This is a form of regulation within the media that allows security for the owners work.

I would perform an interview to research the different regulations within the media and what people ideas and thoughts are about it.

Gibbons, T (1998). Regulating the Media. 2nd ed. London: Sweet & Maxwell . 77.

Paul Long and Tim Wall (2009). Media Studies Texts, Production and Context. Essex, England: Pearsons Educatin Limited . 167.