Peter Lunt & Sonja Livingstone: Media Regulation. Governance and the Interest of Citizens and Consumers, London: Sage Publications Ltd. 2012

Abstract

With Media Regulation, Lunt and Livingstone have provided an important, relevant and well-researched contribution to the debate about media regulation in the UK.Taking the Communications Act 2003 as a point of departure, the book examines New Labour's discourse on 'better regulation' as it unfolds in the area of media and communication policy.Th e wider question explored by the book is whether and under which conditions media can be regulated in a globalised and technologically fast-developing context.It also raises the issue of the changing role played by public service media.If public service is about ensuring the public good, the pertinent question becomes: What is the public good and who defi nes it?Media Regulation gives us a central argument that discusses precisely such issues.Th e book's concern is the Offi ce of Communication, Ofcom, which emerged out of the 2003 Act as a prime example of an innovative institutional design in media regulation.Ofcom has regulatory authority, is independent of government (and, thus, of political control), and is designed to co-ordinate the interests of diff erent stakeholders.Dubbed by Tory politicians as one of the numerous bureaucratic and unaccountable New Labour quangos (or quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations), the institutional design of Ofcom refl ects wider trends and developments in regulation and governance in the UK and elsewhere.Ofcom is also part of a political tendency that can be attributed to the UK New Labour attempt to relocate the Labour movement ideologically and recast it both politically and rhetorically farther towards the middle of the political spectrum (Giddens, Mette Marie RoslyngPeter Lunt and Sonia Livingstone:

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