Broadcast Journalism Ethics

Broadcast journalism entails the dissemination of information through channels other than newspapers. Depending on the context and use, radio and television transmission can serve as a source of education, entertainment, and propaganda. The basic goal of all public media is to deliver information, education, enlightenment, and enrichment to the public. The media should create unique content that meets the requirements of people of all ages and areas of life (Kern, C. 2008). Regulatory authorities such as Ofcom have been set in order to strengthen the quality of the content being aired by public media. Some of the authorities have the mandate of giving and revoking silences to the media houses when their code of conduct is contrary to what has been agreed upon by the relevant stakeholders (McCauley, Michael J. 2003).

The mandate of the Ofcom code is but not limited to: protecting the audience form harm and offense and also protect contributors from unfair treatment. The Ofcom code has ten sections. The first section involves protection of the under-eighteens, section two involves harm and offence, section three is about crime, section four is about religion, section five talks about due impartiality and de accuracy and undue prominence of views and opinions, section six comprise of elections and referendums , section seven is about fairness, section eight is about privacy, section 9 comprises of commercial references in television programmers and lastly section ten of the code involves commercial communications in radio programming.

In Broadcast, the legislative background has always informed the rules. Article 10 of the human rights convention grantees everyone the right to expression. The legislative act brings into light the right by the audience to receive information, creative material and ideas without any interference save for the restrictions that have been described by law. All these, together with article 8 that speaks about the right people have to privacy and family and life, article 9 that guarantees freedom of thought, religion, and conscience, article 14 which guarantees people the right to enjoy human rights without any form of discriminations on the grounds of race, religion, and sex. The Ofcom code reviewed section 149(1) that spoke of the duty of the equality duty of the public sector. The code is applicable on Television and radio content in all the services that have been licensed by Ofcom. According to the Ofcom code, a broadcaster is expected to observe both Fairness code and the standards code. Under the code, the provider is expected to exercise control over the services and programs that should be included in the service. All this is geared towards protecting the consumer from harm. In cases Ofcom receives concerns from the audience over the content of a particular program; Ofcom is obligated by law to remove the service, facility or program under the statutory duties prescribed in the standard objectives that have been spelled out in section 319 0f the act that specifies the material to which it leads. There should be clarity of the control of the transition from broadcaster to third-party to the viewer. This helps in the management of the audience expectation in terms of the material that is being provided to them by the broadcaster.

In cases of breach of this code, Ofcom is expected to publish its findings and explain the reasons why the broadcaster breached the code. Deliberate breaching of the code by the broadcaster warrants the invocation of statutory against the broadcaster. Ofcom has clearly laid out procedures on how to impose statutory sanctions, most of which are found on their website.

There are laid down rules on the content that broadcasters should follow when it comes to the issue of promotions and advertising. There was a set of new rules that were proposed by ITC on May 2001 in regard to advertisement and promotions. After consultation, a set of new rules was endorsed. The rules sought to strike a balance between the support of the real benefits enjoyed by viewers that are brought about cross-platform promotions in the wake of a multi-channel digital environment and the disbenefits arising from cross-platform promotions which include misuse of time meant for other programs through advertisements which sometimes affects editorial integrity. The rules specified that the broadcasting of promotions and advertisements should provide information that is valuable to the viewers of the program that contains the promotion. This should be done in a way that does not compromise the integrity of the editors of the program within which the promotions are placed.

Over the years, television has been an important part of reflecting nurturing cultural and moral values. Through its various programs such as comedy, drama, sports, news, and panels that talk about controversial topics such as personal and taboo issues, television has held the position of being the mirror of the society. Broadcasters have the ability to influence viewers either consciously through commentary on various topics such as politics or subtly by portraying relationships that spark controversy such as same-sex marriages, single-parenthood, etc. There was a time when television networks would ignore current issues and concentrate only prime-time shows that appealed to the general family audience. Prevalent issues such as racial discrimination were avoided by presenting an ideal society to the people. As time went by programs that were not afraid to tackle controversial social issues came up. These programs ranged all the way from entertainment programs, news snippets, and drama series. Some of the local programmings exaggerated violence and escapism. These programs were a big influence on the vulnerable youth especially children hence bringing forth the subject of the role of media in the society. As much as most of the movies aired by television had a moral lesson where the bad guys were always caught, most children will more often than not want to emulate the role of the bad guys hence leading to moral decay. Regulations were the only way to go about this issue.

According to Ofcom’s annual media tracker survey, the standard of TV programs is said to have remained the same for the last 12 months (Ofcom, 2017). There is a large proportion of adults who feel that standards have even become worse than it was a year ago. The viewers attributed the reduction in standards by the many repeats that are broadcasted and lack of variety by many media stations in the United Kingdom. The Same survey, almost 20% of the respondents admitted to having been offended by something on TV. Most of those who had admitted to being offended were older viewers with most of them agreeing on the fact that the contents that offended them should not have been shown. As much as around 57% of the respondents were okay with the amount of sexual content, violence, and swearing that grace TV station nowadays, 25% felt it was not right. Half of the respondents said that it is the responsibility of both the parent and the broadcasters to make sure that children do not see content that is unsuitable for them on TV. 45% felt that parents bore the most of the responsibility for what the children should watch while around 4% thought that the broadcaster should take the responsibility. This is just a general feel of how the audience views broadcasting. Regulations have been put in place to ensure that adult content is not aired during family viewing hours on television especially if its family TV (Ofcom 2017). Ethical issues surrounding these programs should be looked into. For instance, cartoons and animations are always kid’s favorites. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the broadcaster to ensure that the content in these cartoons does not breach the code of ethics and that the children are not treated to adult language while watching the same cartoons. The communication act of 2003 gives Ofcom the duty to come up and from time to time revise a code for radio and TV services. The code should cover the standards for the program standards. These code include the protection of under 18’s, enforcement of application of general standards so that which provides adequate protection of the audience from the material that can be either offensive or harmful, sponsorship, placement of products and in TV programs and enhance privacy and fairness. The reason why Ofcom engages on time to time consumer research is the fact that people’s views on what are generally accepted standards change with time.

The radio has also taken advantage of the internet by providing content to its audience. Most of the content usually does not find itself on air, therefore, giving the audience an opportunity to go through them at their own discretion. Sometimes recorded interviews with news makes have to be trimmed to size for them to be aired on radio or TV mostly because of the time factor. The World Wide Web has provided a platform for the raw version of these interviews to be uploaded online so that interested audience can watch or stream the content in full. Nowadays we even have online TV and radio stations that do not broadcast live on the TV but are only accessible through the internet (Bianco, Robert 2009). This development has been fuelled by the fact that internet is readily available to all and sundry due to its affordability. It is a tall order to bring into effects regulations of the content broadcasted through the World Wide Web (JEP, 2001). It is still an ongoing discussion on how the audience can be protected from harm by the content they access the World Wide Web. The problem is the internet is like a free market and people do whatever they would like with limited restrictions. Smartphones and other devices that can connect to the internet have now reached a critical mass (Ofcom 2012). New brands continue to enter the marketplace hence making access to content easy. There has been a growing audience for Video for demand services (VoD). Ofcom has developed limited restrictions and regulations for these services, all with the aim of protecting the consumer. It is still an ongoing discussion on whether and how audio-visual content can be regulated especially with the increasing scope of content providers.

Ofcom provides an avenue for people who have issues with issues with a broadcaster to file complaints. The organization advises complaints to start by complaining to the broadcaster first and if unsatisfied with the broadcaster’s response they can then go ahead and file a formal complaint to Ofcom. It is a requirement that complainants should fill a complaints form which has been made availed online even though it can still be delivered to the complainant if ordered by phone or mail (Frost, C.,2012, 23). Ofcom has its own internal assessment mechanism that determines if the case can warrant investigations or not. Where the organization is satisfied that there has been a breach of its code, it will review the program and provide details of the complaint to the broadcaster and wait for the broadcaster to file a response. After reviewing the response from the broadcaster, the content board at Ofcom will decide on whether the complaint should be upheld or consider the matter resolved. It takes a fortnight for the organization’s board decision to be made public through its official website. Serious breaches may necessitate the organization to compel the broadcaster to broadcast the adjudication at an opportune time. More serious breaches may result in sanctions which include financial penalties, suspension or sometimes even revocation of the license to broadcast.

Broadcasters have to embrace diversity in their content. Ofcom provides a one-stop shop for broadcasters to embrace who want to embrace diversity in their production. This is all in line with the organization’s objective to provide equality of opportunities when it comes to employment and training in the broadcasting sector. This also helps broadcasters to boost the quality of the content that they put in public and attract a larger audience. While broadcasting relevant stakeholders have to see to it that ethical issues surrounding the profession are adhered to and that both the audience and contributors are protected from harm.

References

Frost, C.2012. I: An evaluation of UK broadcast journalism regulation of news and current affairs, The International Journal of Communication Ethics, 9(1), pp.22-31.

JEP, 2001.The Impact of the Internet on Teaching and Practicing Journalism, The Journal of Electronic Publishing, 7(1) [online] (updated August 2001) Available at https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jep/3336451.0007.102?view=text;rgn=main [Accessed 2nd Nov 2017]Kern, J.2008. The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production, University of Chicago press, available at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/431789.html [Accessed 2nd Nov 2017]

Ofcom, 2017. The Legislative Background [online] (Updated 3rd April, 2017)Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/legislative-background [Accessed 2nd Nov, 2017]

Ofcom, 2017. UK audience attitudes to the broadcast media [Online] (Updated 7th July 2017) Available at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/tv-radio-and-on-demand/tv-research/audience-attitudes [Accessed 2nd Nov 2017]

Ofcom, 2012. Protecting audiences in a converged world [Online] (Updated 25th Jan 2012) Available at https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/tv-radio-and-on-demand/on-demand-research/protecting-audiences [Accessed 2nd Nov 2017]

Bianco, Robert., 2009. The Decade in Television: Cable, the Internet Become Players [Online,](Updated 29th Dec 2009) USA Today, Available at http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2009-12-28-decadeTV28_CV_N.htm. [Accessed 2nd Nov 2017]

McCauley, Michael J. 2003. Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2003), 239.