(M3) Legal and Ethical Issues

Regulatory Bodies for Radio:

OFCOM (The Office of Communications) - OFCOM are the main regulatory body for radio broadcasting. This is because they are the regulator for most types of streamed media, including media such as film, TV and radio. The job of OFCOM is to regulate these types of media, and make sure that they are sticking to all necessary rules and laws. This means that they will checkoff content is entirely appropriate, and also check if it will offend minorities, or larger groups.

ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) - ASA is the regulatory body that will resolve all issues included with broadcasting of advertisements for any the of media. This includes TV advertisements and radio advertisements. The job of ASA is to ensure that firstly, advertisements are selling the products that they promote and they are not lying about what their product can do. They are also in charge of making sure that advertisements are publicly acceptable, for example, if there are any inappropriate conversations, noises or speech in their advertisement, it would not get past ASA as they would ask for it to be removed or changed.

Under 18s

For our radio station, we will need to make thoroughly sure that we stick to these codes, as anything negative that may happen against these codes could fall against the rules, resulting in less viewers, or against the law which could resolve in legal consequences, which could be detrimental for the radio show. This means that we cannot cause any problems, such as libel or slander when speaking about things or people, or things such as copyright which needs to be taken into consideration for music. This means that we need to gain royalties or have permission from the artist to be able to stream and play their music freely. This usually comes at a small cost.

Regulatory Bodies for Advertisements:

ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) - ASA is the regulatory body that will resolve all issues included with broadcasting of advertisement. This includes TV advertisements and radio advertisements. The job of ASA is to ensure that firstly, advertisements are selling the products that they promote and they are not lying about what their product can do. They are also in charge of making sure that advertisements are publicly acceptable, for example, if there are any inappropriate scenes or expressions in their advertisement, it would not get past ASA as they would ask for it to be removed or changed.

My radio show would need to take into account the rules and regulations that are set by ASA and OFCOM . For example, if the advertisements in the show are false or misleading, we may be asked by ASA or OFCOM to take it down, or if it 

Legal Issues - 

Copyright - 

Copyright will be another factor we will have to take into consideration. This is the usage of other people's media or real property within your campaign. Copyright is the intellectual property of people online, and gives them the freedom to choose what happens and who has the rights to their property and work online.

In our promotion we will need to make sure that any media that we use, we have permissions for. This will not be a large issue but will be taken into account when we use things such as music and graphics. All of our recordings for the radio show will be recorded by us, so we will own the right to use and the intellectual property of that footage. However, if there was any music or sound that was someone else's copyrighted property used, we could be punished for this.

Misrepresentation - 

In this radio show, we should make sure that all of the content and music used we have permission for. This is to make sure that we are no misleading an audience into thinking the product is better than it is, or into thinking than the product is different to how it is shown. The way we can do this is by making sure that all of the claims in the video are true, and the footage recorded is of the right guitars, and the sounds we hear are produced from those guitars.

This also means that none of the audio should be altered in post. This could be used to add more sound, or make it sound crisper. All of the footage should be the guitar and the guitar only, with no pedals or anything to affect the sound. If in some case we have to use post effects, we will need to make sure this is known to the audience, by adding a voiceover or a text overlay onto the advertisement to make sure that we are not misleading.

Ethical Issues - 

Racial (Ethical) - 

This is a more interesting subject for our show. At our disposal we have three people working on this promotion that can speak in the radio show. We are all White British which may raise any problems included with the show. however, as long as we do not make race a specific focusing point or problem in our recordings, we will not pass any ethical issues. This can be solved by only focusing on the radio station elements rather than any ethical issues. This will also be less obvious in a radio station as it is just our voices being used.

This can also be bypassed by being completely neutral. This puts less of a highlight on the race of a person and more on the product in the radio show. This problem is a large one in modern media issues, so we would need to make it very sure that we do not offend any minorities and will make sure that our advertisement will not have this issue at any points.

Gender (Ethical) - 

In our advertisements, the main focus is of South Yorkshire bands. It is obvious after researching about listeners for these artists that the advertisements and audience is predominantly male. One of our objectives in the advertisement is to add the equality of the audience. This means that we will use both male and female figures in our radio show. We will give both genders equal recording time and roles.

This means that nobody can be offended or upset by the show, as it may appear that it only targets males. Our change for this advert will mean that women may feel a lot more inclusive in the purpose of our radio show, which will make them feel better about it. This may also boost listeners as the purpose and music style is somewhat male based, and if we can add females to our audience this will boost the customer count massively, so this is also a huge positive for the radio station.

Offence (Ethical) - 

Offence has many categories that it could be interpreted as. The most known category of this is offensive language. This can be anything from swearing to slurring, and is not appropriate in a radio station, or any element of media that is streamed to all ages. This is easy to dodge, however, as all we need to do is make sure that there is not language that will be of offense to anyone, which can be done with a simple double check.

Bibliography - 

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv-radio-and-on-demand/information-for-industry/guidance