Media Regulation, Public Interest and the Law

Abstract

Regulation of the media has traditionally been premised upon claims of ‘the public interest’, yet the term itself remains contested and generally ill defined. In the context of technological development and convergence, as well as corporate conglomeration, traditional ‘public service’ values in British broadcasting are challenged by market values. With such ongoing trends continuing apace, regulators must increasingly justify their interventions. The communication industries' commercialisation and privatisation pose a fundamental threat to democratic values. This book argues that regulators will only successfully protect such values if claims associated with ‘citizenship’ are recognised as the rationale and objective for the regulatory endeavour. While such themes are central to the book, this second edition has been substantially revised and updated to take account of matters such as European Directives, the UK's Communications Act 2003, the process of reviewing the BBC's Charter and relevant aspects of the reform of general competition law.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 113 citations exist upstream.