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The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recently made public five new reports as part of the third cycle of its monitoring process of the laws, policies and practices to combat racism in the Member States of the Council of Europe. Four of the country reports (Albania, Croatia, Poland and the United Kingdom) contain specific recommendations concerning the media. Following a precedent in some of its previous country reports (see IRIS 2003-5: 3), ECRI pronounces itself in favour of the adoption in Albania of self-regulatory codes “to combat reporting that fuels racism, discrimination...

The Communications Act 2003 (see IRIS 2003-8: 10) introduced a form of “co-regulation” under which the commercial public service broadcasters became responsible for annual statements of programme policy setting out their plans for meeting their public service remit and reviewing their own performance against it. The regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) provides guidance on how the self-assessment process should be conducted and has powers to intervene if the process is not effective and the remit has not been met. The commercial broadcasters (ITV, Channels 4 and Five) have now published...

The BBC broadcast a television programme produced by Brighter Pictures. It contained 14 photographs of Mrs David (i.e. Victoria) Beckham and her family. Fraser-Woodward brought an action claiming infringement of their copyright in the images. The defendants argued that they could rely on certain defences contained in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, namely, (i) fair dealing for the purposes of criticism and review and (ii) incidental inclusion with respect to a small number of the images. In addition, there was an issue concerning whether there had been “sufficient acknowledgement”...

The UK Department for Culture, Media and Sport has published a Green Paper on its review of the BBC's Charter. This precedes further consultation before the issue of a new charter in 2006, but a number of the most important proposals are now set out clearly in the Paper. The Paper commits the Government to keeping the BBC as a cornerstone of public service broadcasting, and the new Charter will cover a period of ten years from the end of 2006. The Government has rejected proposals that an Act of Parliament be used instead of a Royal Charter, as that would bring the BBC closer to Government and...

The British communications regulator, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) has now issued the third and final stage of its review of public service broadcasting (for the earlier stages see IRIS 2004-6: 12 and IRIS 2004-10: 12). This stage builds on the previous two and the consultations undertaken on them, and sets out proposals in greater detail. According to the review, we are facing the end of the old model of public service broadcasting because of the growth of competition for advertising revenue and the decline in the scarcity value of the analogue spectrum. Both of these developments will...