PCC Seminar Reflections

This useful aspect of this seminar was to get a better understanding of why the PCC does what it does today. Also, getting to see some case studies really demonstrated the thought process that goes into whether a complaint if upheld or not.

5 interesting facts I learnt from this seminar:

• Newspapers owned by Northern & Shell (Daily Star, Sunday Express, OK!, etc.) have not been regulated by the PCC since January
• If the PCC sees a breach of code but does not receive a complaint from the person in question, the PCC will inform them
• Each year, the PCC receives several complaints from people about things that do not breach the code, e.g. complaining about photographs being published that reveal a dangerous act of public interest
• The parts of the code that are breached the most often are accuracy and privacy
• The PCC can ask contact all press publications, to tell them not to harass a person, etc.

BBFC Seminar Reflections

I think that this seminar was particularly useful because I got a better understand of how the actual process works, as opposed to just the final result. It was also very useful to hear about the BBFC from a personal angle.

Although I learnt a lot from this talk, I have 5 interesting facts:

• The BBFC used to be about censoring films, not classifying them, hence why the C stood for Censors
• BBFC board members are much public than they used to be in the past, they now stand for transparency
• Every country’s classification system, including ours, is mainly based around people’s values
• Films must be watched in the same way that audiences would see them (in 3D, with subtitles, etc.)
• If somebody believes a film was classified incorrectly, that classifier must reply and justify their rating

Project Reflections 1

Before this project started, I didn't know much about media regulation. But since then, I have learnt some rather interesting facts, specifically about the BBFC:

• The BBFC is independent from the government and were set up by the film industry itself.
• An issue's context can have a large effect on the certificiate that a film receives.
• The BBFC review their own guidelines approximately every 5 years to match public opinion.