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On 15 September 2016 the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport presented to the House of Commons the draft Royal Charter (the Charter) for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and its accompanying Framework Agreement, setting out the objectives and governance of the BBC. The Charter reflects many of the proposals described in the White Paper presented to Parliament on 12 May 2016 (see IRIS 2016-7/21). The draft Royal Charter will replace the eighth Charter, which expires on 31 December 2016. The core tenets of the new Charter are the BBC’s Mission and Public Purposes described below. The...

A recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) clarifies that journalistic freedom of expression does not encompass the right to insult and offend an interviewee during a radio interview, including a politician. It also confirms the competence of a media regulatory body to interfere with a journalist’s or a radio station’s freedom of expression in a proportionate way. In the case at issue Ofcom, the independent regulator and competition authority for the United Kingdom communications industries, had launched an investigation into a radio interview about which it received a series...

On 23 June 2016, polling stations in the UK were open from 07.00 to 22.00 to enable voters to participate in the referendum on whether the UK should stay in the European Union or not. Section 6.4 of the Ofcom Broadcast Code states that “discussion and analysis of election and referendum issues must finish when the poll opens (this refers to the opening of actual polling stations. This rule does not apply to any poll conducted entirely by post.)”. A Fox News programme was the subject of a complaint under Section 6. Fox News is a news channel originating in the USA, broadcast on the digital satellite...

On 4 July 2016, Ofcom determined that RT’s current affairs series Going Underground, broadcast on 5 and 26 March 2016, had breached Rule 5.5 of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code by failing to ensure due impartiality. RT is a Russian global news and current affairs channel funded by the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, and in the United Kingdom is broadcast by satellite and digitally by licensee TV-Novosti. Going Underground ran a series of interviews and presentations asserting that the Turkish government was pursuing an “ethnicide” policy against the Kurds and...

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has decided to close an investigation into how the Premier League sells live UK audiovisual media rights for Premier League football matches. The investigation was carried out under the Competition Act 1998, and examined whether the selling arrangements of the Premier League restrict or distort competition. This followed a complaint by Virgin Media about the arrangements for auctioning rights (see IRIS 2015-4/10). In 2006 the Premier League had given undertakings to the European Commission in relation to the joint selling of media rights, but these expired...