Independent Press Standards Organization

What is IPSO and how successful has it been in regulating print journalism

Independent Press Standards Organization (IPSO) refers to one of the independent controllers of the magazine and newspaper sector in the United Kingdome. It was founded on Monday, 8 September 2014 (Harris, 2019). Its formation after the Press Complaints Commission was abolished. This was the organization responsible for regulating the printing sector in the UK since 1990. IPSO, now often enhances and promotes the highest professional journalism codes. The organization also helps the public enquiring for a redress, especially where they believe that there is a breach of editors' standard of practice. This Code deals with aspects such as the invasion of privacy, accuracy as well as intrusion into harassment and shock. If you are seeking media dissertation help, understanding the role of IPSO along with its regulatory framework can be a valuable focus. It is concerned with editorial content in magazines and newspapers as well as the conduct of journalists. Additionally, it deals with complaints and undertakes investigations as per the standards and compliance codes. It also has the role of monitoring, including requiring publications to write a yearly compliance report. IPSO possesses the power to enquire for any publication for critical adjudications and correction where necessary (Harris, 2019). Other Services offered by IPSO include: operating all the as an anti-harassment organization, overseeing the general press codes, working with non-governmental organizations, and charity to support and enhance standards of the press. Lastly, it provides advice to journalists as well as editors. With this view, this paper discusses how successful the IPSO IS in regulating print journalism.

From report issues by the Media Standards Trust (MST) showed a significant follow-up report on the earlier assessment on the success of the IPSO system of the press in the press industry. The report indicated that five years after IPSO started its operations, it has still failed in 25 out of Leveson’s 38 recommendations. The organization has been depicted to continue to fail to regulate the press effectively. As per the report by the MST report 2013, the organization only satisfied just 12 of those 38 recommendations. This is an indication that the organization has dramatically failed. The organization. As per the report, there was an unnecessarily high degree the sector regulation in the IPSO system. Therefore, the IPSO system IPSO “substantially compromises its nominative claim to industry independence, which show some degree of failure. Moreover, in a report in 2019 by MST, revealed that, in six cases where there was insufficient evidence in 2013, it was discovered that IPSO still failed to satisfy any of the cases. Therefore, from these reports, IPSO was unfit to satisfying the resulting role as a regulator in the media industry. Moreover, there is also a case where the organization failed to fulfill a recommendation which was earlier met. This is an indication that other than advancing in tits role, it is failing significantly. As per the MST, the score fell from failing to satisfying 12 recommendations to failing to satisfy 13 recommendations in 2019.

The organization is depicted as a lack of standards investigations. IPSO has the role of setting standards while investigating cases. Therefore, over the last year, it has been indicated to lack standards in its investigation in the past five years since it started operations. Another indicator of failure includes a lack of regulatory powers as well as independence. The “standards investigation” is among IPSO’s additional power in addition to adjudicating on complaints. The power of standard investigation is applied where publishers persist in failing to comply with the standards of publishing as per the IPSO. Moreover, the power is applied where there is crucial concern about behavior or actions, concerning a printing media. When the behavior of failing to comply with codes continues, a fine can also be imposed which can go up to £1m. However, as per the Recommendation 19 in the Leveson report, which suggests that, IPSO should possess the power to impose proportionate and appropriate sanctions of up to 1% turnover with a maximum of £1m (Murphy, 2019). The report also indicates that IPSO changed this provision so that it no longer requires "serious" breaches of the standards code. Furthermore, the organization does not define what 'serious' is. This is an indication that the organization has declined to decline to carry out any standards investigation. Also, it makes the criteria of standard investigation undefined and uncertain. This makes it harder to find bleach among any of its members. The process is, therefore, in favor of the publisher. This is an indication that IPSO has failed to protect the end-users of print media from favoring its members.

IPSO also has restrictions on its membership. The organization has a restrictive approach to which publishers can become members of the organization. As per the Leveson’s Recommendation 24, the membership to IPSO was supposed to be open to all publishers. The organization was also to provide non-discriminatory, fair as well as reasonable terms for all publishers. As per the IPSO, restricts membership to Regulatory Funding Company members. The membership is also restricted to regional newspapers, national newspapers, as well as magazines. There is a challenge of incorporating new members, especially those who are not part of the traditional magazine or newspaper. Therefore, this view suggests that IPSO has failed to regulate the print media since some companies, especially nonmembers, are not put into consideration (Murphy, 2019). Furthermore, the MST report reveals that, for a period of five years since the start of IPSO, the RFC has not developed any new sectors, and its main members continue to be legacy print publishers. Some of the main failure in this sector as per the report by MST includes the fact that RFC has failed to create new sector concerning membership of the regulatory system; hence, IPSO is failing to integrate some of the critical print media company in the country. Additionally, there has been biased in favor of existing members in the way the voting platforms function. Therefore, regardless of membership to the organization being open theoretically, practically, the membership is unfair, unreasonable as well as discriminatory. This creates an impression that the organization has significantly failed (Nurvala & Buckell, 2019).

Given the list of failures as detailed in the discussion above, answering the question; how successful has IPSO been in regulating print media becomes difficult. It is just to the minor extent, through the many complaints that have found some print media companies with breach of their regulations. This further shows how the organisation has been successful through monitoring its member organisations to the extent that it has overseen, successfully, the execution of the said claims’ investigations, and closing such cases as the example that follows. The example is about one of the many successful cases IPSO has executed as far as regulating print media is concerned, and the case in question is that of Water UK versus The Times (07966-19 Water UK v The Times) (IPSO 2020), where the later had inaccurately printed news about the formers dealings as regards water population. IPSO successfully, without bias executed the case, which later served as an example of what IPSO’s impact in regulating print media is. For this case, the organization had been successful in ensuring that the print media present accurate as well as correct information, without bias and thus very beneficial for public consumption. Furthermore, the example case provided here together with many more that IPSO has solved, even those that involved wrong accusations by complainants, meaning that provided justice for print media, fuel the organization’s objective and agenda as far as regulating print media is concerned. Furthermore, through constant monitoring and checks of its member organisations as regards the print media regulations has further been successful in ensuring that these organisations, the media houses, do not breach their code of conduct and the rules set by the government as well as IPSO on news reporting and the use of news sources. Lastly, IPSO has been successful in regulating print media by arguing and presenting policy recommendations on print media regulations to the parliament, which has promoted the development and implementation of laws that ensure that these print media have been well-regulated to curtail the reporting of fake news.

In conclusion, it is clear that the success of IPSO in regulating print media is limited, in matters of regulating the print media, membership, fulfilment of MST recommendations and other failures but mainly has come through parliamentary recommendations, monitoring member organisations, and executing and investigating as well as deciding, without bias, on complaints regarding the print media’s breach of these regulations as set out by IPSO. However, as the essay has discussed, the success by ISPO is undermined by the very many ways, that the organisation is still unable to streamline the print media, to ensure that actual results of a regulated print media are evident. Thus, to the largest extent, IPSO has been unsuccessful in regulating print journalism.

References

Harris, J., 2019. Compromising on the Leveson reforms. Amicus Curiae, 2016(105), p.1.

IPSO (2020). Ruling: 07966-19 Water UK v The Times. [online] www.ipso.co.uk. Available at:

Murphy, J., 2019. Who checks on the Fact Checkers: A comparative study of attitudes to fact checking in the UK and US?

Nurvala, J.P. and Buckell, A., 2019. Defending the media from itself: Reforming media regulations to minimise the impact of misinformation. European View, 18(2), pp.210-219.

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