BFI Trip

I have recently made a visit to the BFI to watch a lecture on regulation. This included information about the exam board, the purpose of regulation and made reference to particular theorists throughout.

My notes:

• The purpose of regulation is to protect vulnerable audiences and hold the powerful to account. 

• We Media
• Dan Gillmore
• The citizen is the journalist and uses media such as Twitter, blogger and social online media to share their own news. Gillmore believes these types of media are a catalyst for a challenge to hegemony.

• Julian Blanc
• A Canadian man who is now band from the UK and Australia for his videos and talks on how to 'deal with' women. He advised aggressive techniques which has been frowned upon by many women as it is seen as disrespectful and follows traditional patriarchal views on how women should be treated, and how male dominance, even if violent, is okay.
• How did he get noticed?
• Used new media such as twitter, facebook, youtube etc..
• The stigma he got for being 'bad' helped create a greater sense of recognition through viral hype and talkability.

Point being that the internet is technically unregulated, traditional media is 'married' to a producer/institution. making it easier to regulate in terms of distribution.

Entrapment

• IPSO
• Sunday mirror journalist 'befriends' Tory politician without identifying who she is or what her job role was.
• She teased him, flirts with him and got him to send her inappropriate images of himself.
• After this she reports him and the story to her newspaper
• Tory was then forced to resign from his job.
• Alternatives
• Leveson inquiry
• IPSO - statutory regulation
• radical alternative complete freedom of press
• Mags and newspapers have a focused target audience and audience choice
• Dan Gillmor promotes citizen journalism and challenges notions of press regulation and censorship online.

TV regulation
OFCOM and BBC Trust

• OFCOM
• A Government organisation, office od communications
• receiving many complaints from TV programmes
• e.g Xfactor
• Lady Gaga dressed unnecessarily dancing around on stage, flaunting herself and objectifying women.
• Comic relief
• Rowan Atkinson mocking religion by saying 'praying doesn't work', offending many people who involves themselves in religious practices  
• Brass eye
• Paedophiles episode 1000, received complaints to ITC

These complaints are taken into account and apologies can be made and the programmes may be taken off some sites such as BBC iplayer if it receives a number of less trivial complaints. This has happened in some cases such as the Rowan Atkinson scene about religion, whereby it got taken off iPlayer, which in turn resolved the problem and OFCOM felt there was no need to further get involved with the matter.