Recent amendments to the Data Protection Bill, supported by the House of Lords and then narrowly defeated in the Commons, would have revived Part 2 of the Leveson Inquiry into unlawful conduct and corporate cover-ups in national newspapers. Continue reading
The International Forum for Responsible Media Blog
Tag: Steven Barnett (Page 2 of 4)
Many years ago, in those halcyon days when The Guardian could afford to pay freelancers, I was commissioned to write a piece on the beginnings of TV sponsorship. Shockingly, rules were about to be relaxed to allow commercial channels to seek sponsors for programmes (it was a very long time ago). Continue reading
There are two ways of looking at the new Press Review announced by Theresa May, the UK prime minister: a genuine attempt to inject some badly needed funds into the failing business model of journalism, or another backhander to the mainstream corporate press to keep them sweet. Depressingly, history suggests the latter. Continue reading
Anyone who seriously believes that a government dictat obliging the BBC to reveal salaries of its top talent was genuinely driven by concerns about accountability should look carefully at those who champion the cause. Continue reading
Yesterday’s announcement by Culture Secretary Karen Bradley that she is “minded” to refer the bid by Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox to the Competition and Market Authority (CMA) is welcome. Continue reading
“Words have consequences. They lead to actions.” So wrote Peter Oborne, the maverick right-leaning Daily Mail columnist about the shocking events in north London recently when a white van deliberately ran into a crowd of Muslims outside a mosque, killing one and injuring several others. Continue reading
With the government’s consultation on whether to proceed with the section 40 cost-shifting incentives of the Leveson framework now closed, there will be a brief political pause. Neither that consultation nor the intense political manoeuvring that is likely to follow should distract us from the long-standing and urgent need to tackle reform of press regulation in order to protect both the public and public interest journalism. Continue reading
Six years after his first frustrated bid to take full ownership of Sky, Rupert Murdoch is seeking once again to capture the 61% he doesn’t already own. In 2011, the bid from Murdoch’s News Corporation (for what was then BSkyB) was first referred to Ofcom, then derailed by the phone hacking scandal. Continue reading
In his blog last week the editor of the Press Gazette argued that there was “barely a cigarette paper’s worth of difference” between would-be press regulators IPSO and Impress. If only. In truth, there is a chasm between the two which would take an essay to enumerate. Here are just four fundamental differences. Continue reading
Anyone reading last week’s newspaper editorials in newspapers such as the Mail or the Telegraph will know that our press is anxious. This week, the independent Press Recognition Panel – established by Parliament as part of the post-Leveson framework – is meeting to decide whether to confer recognition status on Impress, a self-regulator established in order to meet the Charter criteria for genuinely effective and independent self-regulation. Continue reading
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