2. LESSON 3

3. Aims and Objectives
 Intro to the current PCC
 Overview of the PCC
 Read History
 Discussion of The PCC and the reasons for
the Levenson Inquiry Use Case Studies...
 Is Self Regulation Working?

4. Discussion
 Why is Regulation and Control of the Media
Important?
 http://www.pcc.org.uk

5. What is the PCC
 Press Complaints Commission is an
independent body that administers a system a
self regulation for the press

6. Self regulating vs. State
regulation
 Self-regulation means that the industry or
profession rather than the government is doing
the regulation.
 In contrast: State or statutory regulations
means an act of law or a government body
regulates the industry
Arguments
 The British press operates an important position
as the fourth estate.
 The press is there to challenge parliament and act
in the public interest.

7. Research Task
Use the PCC to Discover the Meaning of these
Terms
 What is libel?
A published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation
 What is contempt of court?
disrespect for the rules of a court of law
 What is a super injunction? (Human Rights Act
1998)
 prevent publication of the thing that is in issue and also prevents the
reporting of the fact that the injunction exists at all

8. Question
What Do These Cases Inform Us Of?
 High profile cases - Imogen Thomas - Injunctions / Twitter.
 A twitter account was made that named people who had just taken out a super injunction and one of the people
named was Imogen Thomas, the account claimed that she has had a seven month affair with married football
player Ryan Giggs. This shows that the idea of a super injunction has failed as the whole point of they is to stop
people from finding out things like this but yet a twitter account somehow knows information like this.
 Christopher Jefferies – Libel
 Both the sun and mirror wrote a article about Christopher Jefferies on being arrested on suspicion of murdering
Joanna Yeates but we was innocent of any involvement this made the newspapers libel to Christopher Jefferies as
it was a false article that could have damaged his image. This shows that while newspaper can write about
anything that they feel fit they should be careful as people are being made out to be something that they are not.
 The Sun & The Mirror - Contempt of court
 The daily mirror was fined £50,000 while the sun was fined £18,000 for contempt of count for a articles published
about a suspect arrested on suspicion of murdering Joanna Yeates. Three senior judges ruled that the
newspapers where in contempt of count in writing about a suspect that was innocent of any involvement. This
shows that newspaper writers walk on a thin line when it comes to do with issues in count and can not just write
anything that they feel or they will get punished. But looking at the fines that they give they for multimillion
companies this is nothing so they will just keep on doing it.
Look these up if you do not know!

9. Remember
 In the UK there are different regulatory bodies
some which are regulated by the state i.e.
OFCOM which is regulated by a government
body and then you have PCC and BBFC
which are self regulating.
 Both the BBFC and OFCOM have a statutory
duty to regulate, but one is regulated by the
government the other industry professionals.

10. Plenary
 Question 1.: What is the difference between self regulation and
regulation?
 Self regulation is where the companies themselves regulate over there own rules where are regulation is where
the government in focus the rules
 Questions 2: What are the arguments for and against regulation
 For: it stops people from getting ideas e.g. young people learn how to kill. ( young people shouldn’t see
something's)
 Against: it takes away our freedoms we and our parents should be the ones to pick if we can or can’t watch
something.
 Question 3: How can we have some media which are self regulated
and others which are regulated by the state?
 The only way that this could work this if they both work together but this could be hard as both groups will have
different ideas and both would want the other one to follow them. Or we can have what will most likely happen is
where both sides just do what they feel like and everything will just be confusing as how can you have something
that works for the same thing but does it in different ways.
 Question 4: In an era of the world wide web with global access, and
Web 2.0 is regulation possible at all?
 I don’t think that this could be possible as how can you regulate something that is so big and has so many users. Some places in the
world do this like china but they do it over the top where you can’t really search anything and in a place like England where people
expect to be able to search for anything they want would they accept this new type of regulation. So I don’t really think that it would
be possible to regulate the web in a way that everyone likes.