Search results : 806

On 12 December 2012, Advocate General Jääskinen delivered his opinion to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in the appeals procedure between UEFA and FIFA and the European Commission and thereby upheld the previous decisions of the European General Court (cases T-385/07, T-55/08 and T-68/08). The General Court had dismissed the football authorities’ complaints about the British and Belgian lists of events of major importance that must be broadcast on free-to-air television. The member states concerned had prepared their lists in accordance with Article 3a of the Television Without...

On 29 November 2012 Lord Justice Leveson published his report relating to the eponymous inquiry on the culture, practices and ethics of the press. The remit of the inquiry was extensive, covering topics from the relationship between the police and newspapers to the closeness of media proprietors to politicians, but perhaps the key focus and most potentially controversial outcome related to plans for the future of press regulation. The press in the UK has been under a loose form of self-regulation since 1991 when the current body, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), replaced the old Press Council...

Inquiries into the handling of two separate investigations into alleged child abuse by the BBC’s flagship programme Newsnight have found serious compliance and cultural problems. As a result of the second problem, the BBC’s Director-General was forced to resign. The first issue concerned the decision to drop an investigation into alleged child abuse by Jimmy Saville, a former disc jockey who had died on 29 October 2011. Newsnight commenced an investigation based on allegations by victims, including that the police had dropped their own investigation because of Saville’s age. However, the story...

Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, has overturned a decision of the co-regulatory Authority for Television on Demand (ATVOD) that Channel Flip was an ‘on-demand programme service’ for the purposes of part 4A of the Communications Act 2003. ATVOD’s decision meant that it had to notify ATVOD, pay a fee, and meet a limited number of regulatory requirements. This part of the Act had been added to implement the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Ofcom had designated ATVOD as the appropriate regulatory authority to carry out functions under this part of the Act, but its decisions were made subject...

The UK communications regulator Ofcom has recently considered complaints that two BBC “police dramas” infringed rules protecting children. The programmes are Line of Duty and Good Cop. As regards Line of Duty, the issue was the failure to protect a 13 year-old child actor from being exposed to sexually explicit language and violence. In one scene, the character was head-butted and attempted to sever a policeman's finger with pair of bolt-cutters and there was also a scene where sexually-explicit language was directed at him. Issues arising were (i) whether the programme complied with rules of care...