Media Policy and Regulation

1. INTRODUCTION In the following assignment, we explain internal regulations and he various forms of regulation; norms, pressure groups, advertisers and consumers and establish how they impact the media and content. We also take you through the journey of the four stages (Introduction, growth, maturity and decline) in the life cycle of a portable, film camera. We consider the duration, nature of the market, measure of competition and sales volumes for each phase. Lastly, we take a look at a news report entitled “Five children die as school coach overturns in crash”. There are nine news values that reporters use to contextualise a story however, we will only be discussing five of them as well as examining the evidence that shows gatekeeping and agenda-setting have been practised in the news room of this article.

2. MEDIA POLICY AND REGULATION Internal regulation, unlike external regulation which refers to laws and statutory organisations that have an influence on how the media should perform, refers to how the medium itself and non-statutory organisations organise the functioning and performance of the media. It is whereby the media and communications industry set rules and regulations for themselves to adhere to in order to maintain professionalism, ethical practices and external regulations. There are numerous forms of regulation however we will be taking a closer look at four in particular, namely; norms, pressure groups, advertisers and consumers. “Norms have to do with what's acceptable or unacceptable to the audience.” Fourie (2009:85). Norms are flexible and are reflected in what the media choose to publish. As an example of a norm, the media will not easily publish a photo of an uncovered deceased person as this would be disrespectful to the family and friends and is therefore socially unacceptable. Although pictures do sometimes get published, it is very seldom and not without an uproar by viewers therefore influencing the