News lesson final task

 Does the UK press need to be more strictly regulated?

Personally, I believe their should be a restriction on the level of which the press is allowed to operate. Whilst I fully support the idea and continued use of a free press, there is no denying the press have built themselves a reputation for being aggressive and using deliberately harmful tactics and even going as far as to cause disruptions in order to get a decent news story. One of these cases is that of former Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas who was diagnosed with HIV, a condition which can lead to auto immune deficiency or AIDS, and instead of being able to break the troubling news to his parents, the press revealed it in order to attempt to get a story on their reactions. It is situations like this which can severely damage lives and break bonds between families as their is little to no regulations on what the press is allowed to say. In fact, if the press release a story filled with enough misinformation to be considered false, the only thing the paper is regarded to do is pay a reasonable fine, and publish a small conformation that the story is false anywhere in their next paper. This hardly does justice to falsifying stories and i believe more regulations should be in place.

Stories designed to play on readers emotions at the expense of usually famous people is a common practice with tabloid newspaper, especially the right-wing paper The Sun. This paper is notorious for its horrific bashing of celebrities from personal choices to their physical apperance, to even digging up tragedies from people past for a front page story. This is the case with Cricketer Ben Stokes who had it revealed by The Sun that before his birth, his mothers children were murdered. Whilst this makes for a captivating read and millions of sold copies for the tabloid, it can drastically change a persons life for the worse and in the case of Ben Stokes, have serious reproductions on his mental health. For these reasons i believe that their should be stricter regulations of the presses action and behaviour in order to prevent more damage being caused.

Should the government play a bigger role in the regulation of the press?

I do not believe that the government should play a bigger role in the UK press. I believe this because of the fact that the press is truly about free speech. We have always valued free speech in the UK and the press is even referred to as the fourth estate. Whilst many people may disagree with the press and many outlets and newspapers like the sun or guardian, removing the option for them to work independently will restrict the publics access to free speech and limit the what news we hear. Countries like China, north Korea and others with state-controlled press are limited to certain stories, often this is used to prevent the public from knowing certain things or to keep a positive image of the country. A government controlled press limits the number of expressive opinions a person will be able to learn and will limit a persons knowledge of the outside world expansionaly. Overall, whilst I have stated their needs to be some restrictions on what the press can do and get away with, I believe they have the right to publish freely without government intervention.