Assignment 2: Law

In this report I will describe the main areas of law; they are Defamation, Contempt of Court and Reporting Restrictions. I will also be giving examples from each law from the last 5 years.

Defamation is a statement that made to damage a persons reputation in the eyes of others, the statement can merely be a suggestion or implication; a person, company or a group of people can be defamed and you can also be sued for this. A recent example of defamation is the Simon Singh case, British author and journalist Simon Singh wrote an article in The Guardian, which resulted in him being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA).The suit was dropped by the BCA on 15 April 2010.

Contempt of Court exists to protect the running of the court, it contains something called a 'strict liability rule' which prevents any publication or broadcast from affecting the decisions of the court. The maximum prison sentence in the UK is 2 years but the law is becoming difficult to enforce due to the worldwide nature of media coverage. In July 2013 Two jurors were jailed for two months for contempt of court after one posted a comment on Facebook and the other researched a case online.

Reporting restrictions come into action when there is a reason why a story cannot be reported. This usually occurs when there is a child involved. Children are not allowed to be reported on due to privacy reasons. Other cases that aren't allowed to be reported on are those involving victims of a sexual crime such as rape or sexual assault. These are serious cases and very private. Reporting restrictions also cover people who have witnessed a crime. An example of this is Jeremy Forrest case; 31 year old Maths teacher started an affair with a 15 year old student which then lead to them both fleeing to France to be together; her name has been kept from the media for her protection.

Assignment 1: Evaluation

The target audience for this voice piece is young adults who drive.They relate to these people because they are written and read in an informal way which is appealing to the age range. The story I used relates to the target audience because it is something that will be effecting them.

I added a slight audio in the background as it gave the bulletin something else, I then decided on taking the audio out as I felt the story was too serious. 

I chose a story about drink drivers at Christmas as this is relevant to the target audience as they are more likely to be pressured into driving under the influence. 

Finding people to take the vox pop seriously was difficult as they were all younger people I was targeting.

We followed the conventions of news so a script, voice piece and TX details were also all included. We made sure that these were included so that the bulletin would flow nicely and seem more real.

If I had a chance to do the project again I would have changed the target audience as I feel an older audience would have given a more serious answer and not have been so reluctant to answer questions on drink driving.