1. Media essay
Explain how the political context in which newspapers are produced,
influences their ownership and regulation. Refer to the guardian and the
daily mail newspapers you have studied to support your answer.
IPSO stands for Independent Press Standards Organisation. It is a regulator
for newspapers and magazines in the UK. It holds papers account, protects
the rights of the individuals who are being written about, upholds the
standards of journalism and still maintains freedom of expression for the
press. This is used in order to maintain rules for the newspapers and
uphold their reputations by making sure no unethical or bad articles are
written and then testified. This organisation is liked to the regulation of
newspapers as it keeps rules in order for what is allowed to be written and
produced.
This is now a very important idea due to the political context behind it-the
Leveson inquiry. The Leveson inquiry is a public inquiry into the culture,
practices and most importantly, the ethics of the British press following
the News International phone hacking scandal, which was later chaired by
Lord Justice Leveson. In this scandal, a newspaper called “News of the
world” employed a detective to hack a number of people’s phones in
order to get news stories from them. The biggest scandal was that the
mobile phone belonging to the missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler had been
hacked by the News of the World. That demonstrated that phone hacking
had appeared to be far more widespread than had been previously known.
Due to this, a bad outcome came for “News of the world”such as being
discontinued and also exposed by other papers as this scandal exposed
them..
Overall, this shows how the Leveson inquiry is an important factor into the
regulation of newspapers and the creation of IPSO. This is because the
outrage from what happened caused the “news of the world” to be
discontinued, and IPSO to be created. IPSO is still important today as it is
used to regulate lots of papers but the only one that isn’t a part of it is the
Guardian. Not only can it be used to make sure papers are written
appropriately along with what they research to stop more reports such as
2. the Leveson report, but they can also use IPSO for opinionated articles as
it is believed that the News Industry has too much political power and
influence over the British public, which has reduced freedom of speech
and compromised democracy so it is not in public interest.
There are also many examples of the influence of ownership on papers.
For example, the guardian wrote an article where leader of the Brexit
Party was talking about agreeing not to contest against 317 safe
conservative seats, because Farage wanted to give them a chance at
having seats. This could have come from him being pressured into it as the
papers had previously said he can ruin the UKs hope of Brexit happening,
which criticised him and so he didn’t want this bad image to seem real.
This can show how the papers can affect the views of the British public, as
their influence is held strongly over the eyes of the public, as they
remember lots of what they read and take lots of factors into
consideration which leads them to making easy opinions of people in the
papers.In addition, it shows how the people who work for the guardian
such as Katherine Viner and Scott Tross cause the paper to have a left wing
bias, therefore will purposely make any party who they oppose to come
across as bad.
