Post DMG media regulation

Regulations are sets of codes which the industry is set to follow when creating their products. We need these press regulations to control the different stories that the news publishes for the public to see, as we must consider the different kinds of people in society. For example if there was too much regulations the news would be quite boring and people would lost interest in the news, it might also censor the newspaper, preventing them from having freedom of speech. On the other hand if there was no regulations, the journalists would be able to lie in their newspaper and this could be done for the shock value of the audience, to get more readers. It could also effect the peoples opinions using false information which is very wrong. It could also effect the views of young people on the world or certain groups of people having a permanent effect. There are two types of regulations, the first is statuary regulation, which is when a government organization checks up on the company making sure they are following all the laws and regulations. The second type of regulation is self regulation, this is when the business sets up their own regulator making sure they follow all the laws and regulations. There was an incident of a phone hacking scandal, this was a series of cases of phones of high profile people being hacked, the phones were used to get all types of interesting news, they did this using voicemail pins listening to the different messages on the phones. They used the information from these hacks in their own paper, for their own gain.

Due to the phone hacking scandal there was an inquiry launched, the Leveson inquiry, this was a public inquiry which was launched to find out what happened in the phone hacking scandals. They would also need to decide what would happen after this scandal and how the regulations should be changed and adjusted to make sure that this type of stuff does not happen again within the press community.The report also said that the action of the press caused serious harm to some people. The report also said that the press should be self regulated but there should be a watchdog within the companies that checks and makes sure that the regulator is doing their jobs and making sure the company is following the laws and regulations. There are now two current press regulators within the UK, they are IPSO and Impress, they do not follow this rule and there is not watchdog looking over the regulators within the company.