Thomas Gibbons

The Future of Public Service Content in the United Kingdom

Public service broadcasting still has a central position in the production and content of media programming in the United Kingdom. Yet that position has never been taken for granted, with the rationales, organisation, financing and regulation of public service media being subjected to continual scrutiny since the 1920s. A succession of broadcasting committees, Parliamentary committees and Royal Commissions has been supplemented by debates each decade about renewal of the BBC’s charter and by policy consultations prior to frequent legislative reform. The history of UK media policy has been one of deregulation of public provision, as new markets and technologies become available. However, the process has been gradual and incremental because, when assessing developments in programming genres and their delivery, concerns about the possibly negative implications for public service broadcasting have led to caution about the pace of reform. Over the years, there have been moments when the very survival of public service broadcasting has seemed to be at stake, but there is now a real sense that a critical turning point has been reached, a sense reflected in the title of the recent report, Public Service Broadcasting: Short-term Crisis, Long-term Future?, from the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications.1 That report is a response to Ofcom’s Second Public [2009] 1 Journal of Media Law 1–13

Wolfgang Schulz, Peggy Valcke and Kristina Irion (eds), The Independence of the Media and its Regulatory Agencies: Shedding New Light on Formal and Actual Independence against the National Context, European Communication Research and Education Series

(2014). Wolfgang Schulz, Peggy Valcke and Kristina Irion (eds), The Independence of the Media and its Regulatory Agencies: Shedding New Light on Formal and Actual Independence against the National Context, European Communication Research and Education Series. Journal of Media Law: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 305-308.

Restraining the BBC: the 2016 Charter settlement

ABSTRACT A new BBC Charter and Agreement came into force at the beginning of 2017 and has introduced the most far-reaching reshaping of the broadcaster since it was constituted as a public corporation in 1927. The BBC’s programming and services must now demonstrate distinctiveness, it will be regulated externally by Ofcom, and its Board will be more directly accountable to Parliament and licence fee payers. In effecting these changes, the new policy reaffirms the continued importance of the BBC to audiences and the UK media industry. But, depending on how it is implemented, it has the potential seriously to threaten the BBCs autonomy and independence, and the very principles of public service media.

Public service broadcasting 3.0: legal design for the digital present

the case law under the pre-existing Reynolds common law defence. At this point the authors come full circle, returning to their initial exploration of the ambit of the public interest in the field of investigative journalism. This is an extremely timely book, reflecting the legal and regulatory landscape in the aftermath of the Leveson Report. Although certain sections of the press were found to have acted in an unethical way, requiring further regulatory oversight, it is apparent from this work that there are in place numerous legal constraints that cut across the newsgathering process, creating pitfalls for the unwary journalist or undermining legitimate reporting in the public interest. In such a climate, secure knowledge of the law is essential and it is hard to think of another book on the market that pulls together the legislative and other materials relevant to newsgathering in such a clear, comprehensive and systematic way. Newsgathering: Law, Regulation and the Public Interest will undoubtedly prove to be an essential and much thumbed resource for lawyers, editors and journalists (as well as individual bloggers and reporters operating outside mainstream media organisations) who advise on, or take part in, the newsgathering process. It will equally be an invaluable guide for charitable, civil society and public or private bodies that collect and disseminate information in the public interest. Though written from the perspective of the newsgatherer, it should be required reading for employers in the police, health and other civil service sectors, who need to be aware of the wider public interest in access to information when framing contractual terms and responsibilities. Students of media law, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, will find the book offers an extraordinarily helpful road map as to the sometimes bewildering, disparate and technical array of rules and regulations that govern investigative journalism. This is not a cheap book but, for those working in the field, is likely to be well worth the outlay. Newsgathering: Law, Regulation and the Public Interest is set to become a leading media law text and is highly recommended.

Conceptions of the press and the functions of regulation

Media convergence poses an existential threat to the continued existence of the press, but some conceptions of its role are sufficiently important to a healthy democracy to justify a new constitutional and regulatory settlement in which the press is given protection in return for acknowledging the need for proper accountability and good standards of journalism.

What Is ‘Sufficient’ Plurality?

Recent discussion of media pluralism, whether in the UK, Europe, Australia, or the US, demonstrates how sophisticated the policy and regulatory choices have become. Instead of the blunt measures which characterised early structural regulation of media ownership, contemporary proposals aim to measure more accurately the influence that different kinds of media have on democratic opinion forming, and offer schemes which combine structural elements with more complex analyses of firms’ behaviour in media markets.