Natalie Fenton Lurking in this week's Queen’s Speech were five bills that could impact upon news organisations and journalists: the draft Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer Bill; the Online Safety Bill; the Media Bill; the Data Reform Bill and the National Security Bill. Over the coming weeks, MRC will be interrogating all of them. But here, we focus on one small … [Read more...]
MRC Weekly Digest – October 29th 2021
Hi everyone, Eliz Mizon here with the Media Reform Coalition blog every Friday. For even more media news and analysis, the latest media reform campaigns, and intriguing content from around the web, follow me at Chompsky: Power and Pop Culture. For now, here's your media news digest. HackedOff’s IPSO Campaign Receives 5000 Signatures A few weeks ago we shared … [Read more...]
Media Influence Matrix UK report: Government, Politics and Regulation
JUST OUT! The Media Reform Coalition is working with researchers from the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) at Central European University to investigate the influence of shifts in policy, funding, and technology on contemporary journalism. This is part of the international Media Influence Matrix project, coordinated by CMDS, which has so far produced 19 reports … [Read more...]
The sorry betrayal of the victims of press abuse
by Natalie Fenton Last week the culture minister Matt Hancock announced the government’s response to the public consultation on the Leveson Inquiry and its implementation. The government announced that it will repeal Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 and will not continue with the Leveson Inquiry Part 2 that was supposed to consider corrupt relations between police … [Read more...]
The Sun’s Lying Headline and the Hopelessness of IPSO
By Brian Cathcart If you want to see why dishonest editors are so attached to their sham regulator, IPSO, and why this is extremely bad for Britain, you could hardly have a better illustration than the case of the Sun’s reckless front-page treatment of a poll this week. At a time of heightened anxiety about terror attacks – a time when, all evidence shows, gratuitous … [Read more...]
Media policy, power and politics and the Election
by Natalie Fenton Maybe it should come as no surprise that in the aftermath of the Hacking scandal and the Leveson enquiry that followed media policy was an election issue. Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party pledged substantive media reforms in their election manifestos. Not that you would have known it from the media. The Loughborough study noted that the … [Read more...]
Why this isn’t the time to ignore Katie Hopkins
by Guy Taylor, steering committee, Movement against Xenophobia The outrage of Katie Hopkins' vicious article about the deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean is uncomfortably familiar to everyone. Coming just a couple of days before the deaths of 700+ migrants throws her callous and controversialist words into grim perspective. Hopkins thrives on the sensational, the … [Read more...]