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The UK Government issued its long-awaited proposals on media ownership in May 1995. The proposals are for a reform of the currently highly complex rules governing concentration of ownership in broadcasting and cross-media ownership. The Government has accepted that it should retain special rules for the media rather than leaving control to ordinary competition law, but has aimed to introduce greater flexibility in order to reflect rapid technological change. The proposals deal seperately with short and long term changes. In the short term, new legislation will permit newspaper groups with less...

In a recent libel case the House of Lords has held that, in order to determine the meaning of certain words, it is necessary to take into account the context in which the words were used and the mode of publication. Plaintiffs were two actors in a popular television series, whose faces were superimposed on pornographic pictures in a computer game. The News of the World published an article on the computer game with two photographs of the visual display, under the headline "Strewth! What's Harold up to with our Madge?". The text of the article explained that the plaintiffs were the unwitting victims...

The BBC had planned to broadcast throughout the UK a 40-minute interview met the Prime Minister in its current affairs programma Panorama on 2 April. In Scotland, though not in the rest of the UK, local authority elections were due to be held on 6 April. Other political parties commenced proceedings in the Court of Session, the supreme court of Scotland, on the morning of 2 April to obtain an interim order prohibiting the broadcast until the elections had taken place. The court decided that the parties established a prima facie case that the broadcast would breach the BBC's duty of impartiality...

The Heads of State and Government of seven major industrialized nations and the President of the European Commission, have met in Halifax for their 21st annual Summit. They announced that they were committed to the successful completion of current negociations in services sectors and, in particular, significant liberalization in financial and telecommunications services. They will proceed with follow-up work foreseen in the Uruguay Round Final Act. They encourage work in areas such as technical standards, intellectual property; an immediate priority is the negotiation in the OECD of a high standard...

The Secretary of State for National Heritage introduced the release of the Green Paper on proposals for cross-media ownership, saying that 'The public interest requires the protection of diversity and plurality. It also requires a healthy and growing media industry'. The reforms would affect the structure presently set out in the Broadcasting Act 1990, and which, broadly, aims to prevent owners in one medium owning more than 20% in another. There will be a period for consultation, ending in August. The Green Paper's proposed changes are to be phased in over three stages. First: the liberalisation...