Employment Oportunities in the Media Sector

What is a Contract?
A contract is a legal and binding document that goes through all of the terms and conditions of your contract, for example, an employment contract would go through the hours you are expected to work, how much you should be expected to pay, and other things like how many paid holidays you can have as well as sick days.

Why is a Contract important?
A contract is important because it gaurentees you a job and a certain pay, provided you stay within the guide lines of your contract, this helps to protect both the employee and the employer, so both parties are happy.

What are the diffrent kinds of contracts?

• Part Time
• Full Time
• Fixed Term
• Freelance
• On Completion
• Casual

Part Time
A part time contract is a contract that usually specifies fewer hours than a full time contract, usually being under 30 hours a week, and are often paid half the salary, because they are working half the time.

Full Time
A Full Time contract is a contract that usually specifies that the worker work between 35 and 40 hours a week, and can often reap certain benifits, like health care and other benifits.

Fixed Term
A fixed term contract is when they're employment ends on a certain date, or on completion of a certain project or specific task, these contracts are often used if you are a seasonal or casual employee, a specialist on a certain project, or if you are covering for a maternity leave.

Freelance
A freelance worker means that it is a person that works for themself, and takes contracts from companies, this can be good because it means you are your own boss and you can work your own hours, you can also make a lot of money from freelance work. The downsides are that with your hours being more flexable, you may need to get something finished in a small amount of time, and also work isn't gaurenteed.

On Completion
 This form of work contract means that you will be payed upon completion of the work that you have been given, this is good because it means you can work flexable hours but can be bad because you might get a strickt deadline.

Casual
Depending on country, a casual position, compared to part-time or full time, usually equates to higher pay but less certainty of roster/amount of work. Casuals are not entitled to paid sick days/leave. Being a casual in a place where you get enough hours can be quite an advantage, for example for 20 hours work you may make what a full timer makes for 30 hours.


Profesional Behaviour
When working in a profesional enviroment you should act and behave in a certain way, for example, having good manners and puncuality is important.
Some other important traits are:
Being creative
Orginisation
Dressing apropreately
Respectful
Motivated
Having active listening skills
Good leadership skills
Having initiative.
Being able to meet deadlines is important as well as being able to work under presure, this is important because you may need to finish something in a hurry some day and will only have a short amount of time to do it in.

Recruitment
Diffrent

 

Russell Brand prank calls

 

This article contains transcripts that contain some language some readers may find offencive.

Thursday 16th November

Johnathan Ross and Russel Brand record their show, with Ross as a guest co-presenter, early in the show Ross jokes about an interveiw planned with Sachs saying "I had a go on his daughter" would be the sort of thing that Russel would say.

 

Russel Brand later goes on saying that he knows his grandaughter 23 year old Georgina Baillie saying that she had visited his home and she is a member of a band called the SatanicSluts.com

 

He then carried on saying "So don't mention that his grandaughter is a satanic slut."

 

Message One

Later on they go on to call Sachs on his phone in order to preform the interveiw when finding out his is unavailable they leave a message on his answering machein, in which Ross blurts out "He fucked your granddaughter... I'm sorry I apologise. Andrew, I apologise, I got excited, what can I say - it just came out."

 

Brand goes on to say "Andrew Sachs, I did not do nothing with Georgina - oh no, I've revealed I know her name. Oh no, it's a disaster."

 

After that Ross adds "If he's like most people of a certain age, he's probably got a picture of his grandchildren when they're young right by the phone. So while he's listening to the messages, he's looking at a picture of her about nine on a swing..."

 

Message Two

 They decide to call back in order to "appologise" only going on to say

"Andrew, this is Russell Brand. I'm so sorry about the last message, it was part of the radio show - it was a mistake."

Ross adds: "It might be true but we didn't want to break it to you in such a harsh way."
Brand goes on to say: "No, I'm sorry, I'll do anything. I wore a condom. Put the phone down. Oh, what's going to happen?"

Message Three
When they call back this time, they open with "She was bent over the couch..."

After this they decide to break out into song, some of the lines included "I said some things I didn't of oughta, like I had sex with your granddaughter..."

Message Four
When calling him back for the fourth time, they start out by saying
"Alright Andrew Sachs' answer phone? I'm ever so so sorry for what I said about Andrew Sachs."
"Just say sorry," adds Ross,
"I'll kill you," says Brand laughing.
"Don't say you'll wear him as a hat - just say sorry," continues Ross.
"Sorry, right," adds Brand.

From a BBC Trust report a BBC employee "on loan" to Brands firm vanity projects was shocked by the intial exchange but decide to reslove the problem with the content in the editing stage.

Ross said that consent to broadcast what was said would need to be gotten from Sachs and his grandaughter.


Thursday 16 October
The shows Producer telephones Sachs, their accounts of the conversation are diffrent, the producer said that he had given permission, but he said he demurred, both had said that the content needed toning down.



Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7694989.stm

 

Regulatory Bodies: Issues

 

 

What is a monoply?

A monopoly is when a buisness or persons owns an exclusive right to sell or release a certain comodoty, this means that you could only go to a specific provider for that good or service.

 

Why is it important to ensure that no one single media producer in the UK has a monopoly?

This is important because say for example there was only one television provider you would have to go to them for it, which meant that since there was no way to divert the demand to anywhere else, that they could charge what ever price that they wanted for it, as there is no competition from anyone else.

This is also an issue because if this was to happen it would mean a very restrictive service, as only one buisness having control of it would mean that it would only go in that one buisnesses direction as that is in their best inteterest.

 

Why is consumer choice important?

Consumer choice is important because it defines the demand for goods and services, if you aren't reaching for the consumer choice then there will not be as much demand for your comodaty and therefor it will not sell as good as it could.

If you take consumer choice into consideration this means that you will be hitting what the public wants, and therefor will sell your good or service.

 

What is censorship?

Censorship is a supression of speech or other forms of media or communication that is beleived to be offensive, harmfull or in bad taste.

 

What are arguments for and against censorship?

 

For:

1.It helps protect people from things that they may not want to be subjected to.

2.It creates a safe enviroment

3.It helps prevent damage done to people or products.

 

Against:

1.It prevents and impedes on peoples freedom of speech

2.Sometimes it can go too far and things that don't need to be, become censored

3.It can create an air of things being watered down and can be used for a bad cause, for example restricting someones freedom to spread news about a company or buisness or even goverment.

 

Why should under 18's be subject to particular considerations by regulators?

They should be under particular consideration to help prevent them being subjected to material or information that may be harmful to their well being or mental state, for example a child being allowed to watch an 18 rated film, being subjected to material they do not yet understand for example drug references, sexual content or scenes of graphic violence.

Offcom ASA PPC BBFC
http://mle.mbro.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_8649_1%26url%3D

Legal and Ethical

For this piece of work I was asked to look up and write about legal and ethical constraints within the media industry.

Privacy Law

What is Privacy Law?

The earliest definition of privacy in England law was given by Judge Cooley who defined privacy as "the right to be left alone". In 1972 the Younger Committee, an inquiry into privacy stated that the term could not be defined satisfactory.

Again in 1990 the the Calcutta Committee concluded that. "nowhere have we found a wholly satisfactory statutory definition of privacy.

Examples of Privacy Law

The Data Protection Act
The data protection act was a law put forward to prevent people getting hold of information that should not otherwise be available to them, this means in places like hospital settings doctors can only ask for relevant information and by law, are not allowed to divulge this information with anyone else.
This kind of law also applies to the media industry, for example the manager of a video project may require the phone numbers and emergency contacts of all the cast and crew, this is so that they can get in contact with them if need be.

Privacy Act 1874 in the US which says "No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication"

Some examples of broken privacy in media include:
Phone Hacking Scandal
Kate Middleton Topless Photos
Tulisa Sex Tape
Kate Middleston Hospital prank call
Prince Harry in Vegas Photos

Obscene Act 1959
The obscenity law is an act created to stop the publishing of obscene media, it was founded by Roy Kenkins in 1959 on 29th July and was later made legalised on 29th of august.
At the time of its creation it had two main defences, the first being innocent dissemination and secondly the defence of public good.

The act has been used in several high profile cases like The Penguins book for publishing, lady chatterley's lover, meant to be a children's book, it contained high level swear words multiple times and contained sexual scenes.

More recently Darryin Walker was found not guilty under the act for posting a story entitled, "Girls (scream) Aloud, this was an erotic fiction posted online containing the fictional account of the capture, rape and murder of the pop group, Girls Aloud.

Another case was in 2010 when Gavin Smith was charged after discussing his fantasies about spanking children. After the Crown Prosecution Service appealed the judge's original ruling that there was no case to answer, he was subsequently convicted in 2012.

Broadcasting Act 1990
The British Broadcasting Act was created to change the structure and the ownership of television and radio broadcasting, This meant that the TV and Radio companies became the broadcasting instead of the regulators.

Libel Law
Libel law is a law that stops reporters from publishing false articles about anyone without proof of it being true, for example, a reporter cannot publish something about a celebrity if it is not true, to prevent risk of damaging that celebrity's reputation.

For example, The BBC had to pay 185 thousand pounds in damages to Lord Mcalpine following the Newsnight broadcast show in November that wrongly accused him of child abuse.

Another example is when Frankie Boyle won £54,650 in damages after the Daily Mirror had described him as a racist.

Copyright and Intellectual Property Law
This law covers peoples ideas, also know as interlectual property, copyright also helps to proctec peoples branding.
A company or producer can get a legal copyright on a brand, an example of this is coca-cola, their corporate logo is protected under this law, preventing people from posing as them, or imbelishing their name.
Interlectual property law dosn't just cover a brand, but also covers ideas, for example, if someone came up with a design for a new kind of camera device, they could get this idea protected with a patent, preventing someone from taking this design and using it for their own gain.

Ethics
Ethics are a non legal set of rules that people go by, these are not usually writen down in words but if a company or orginisation breaks ethics it can often have bad reprecutions for them, though some ethics are also covered by laws, this is to protect the public and the company itself.

An example of bad ethics had come up in recent events, this was called the Leveson Inquiry, it was a phone hacking scandal that happened on the 13rd of July, in 2011.
It is called the Leveson Inquiry because Lord Leveson was apointed chairman of the Inquiry.

The first part of the inquiary was to examine the culture, practices and the ethics of the press, and in more specific, the relationship between the press and the public, police and politicians.

In inquiery was split into 4 modules, these were:
"

Module 1: The relationship between the press and the public and looks at phone-hacking and other potentially illegal behaviour.

Module 2: The relationships between the press and police and the extent to which that has operated in the public interest.

Module 3: The relationship between press and politicians.

Module 4: Recommendations for a more effective policy and regulation that supports the integrity and freedom of the press while encouraging the highest ethical standards."

Source: http://www.levesoninquiry.org.uk/