(M2) Legal and ethical issues are identified and resolved for the planned production

I have created the post to discuss and explain the legal and ethical constraints I will need to bear in mind whilst creating my magazine. I will explain how these laws affect me and how I can stay within them and make sure my magazine does not break any fundamental rules, laws and does not offend anyone.

Regulatory Bodies - 

IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organisation) - 

IPSO is the regulatory body that regulates things such as newspaper and magazine (print). This means that all of the magazine companies must have their magazines looked at by IPSO before they are produced publicly. This covers things such as images, and how they are presented. This will remove any inappropriate images or text that is present in the magazine.

This will also cover issues such as copyright and misrepresentation and make sure that everything in the magazine is fair and true.

Legal Issues - 

Legal issues are an extremely important factor in creating a magazine. These issues are instated by the government and are laws that entail using media products online. These laws are in place for everyone that uses and creates media products, so these laws are very important when creating media products. These laws are created by the government, and are in place across the entire of the UK.

Copyright - 

One of these laws is copyright. Copyright is the ownership of online media material, and having the freedom of choice where and how your content is used and whether you would like your content to be used at all. This means that people can inflict copyright laws on any media that they have created online. When people have this ownership, this means that companies such as ours should have either bought rights or have gained permission to use someone else's content in our work.

I will need to take copyright into consideration in my advertisement when using media products. If we use any third party products in our advertisement that is visible to the public, we must gain privileges to use this content from the author. The easiest way to bypass this is by creating every piece of content that I use by myself. This means that we can not be challenged for our media uses, as all of them are created under my own copyright protection. I can use this content legally anywhere we would like, and for anything I would like to use it for. This means that this problem of copyright would not arise in my advertisements.

Defamation (Libel and Slander) - 

Libel and Slander are both forms of Defamation. Slander is the spoken defamation of a person or a company. This means that it would be spoken either in person, or online. This also involves things such as radio which is livestream. Slander can be treated with punishment at legal courts across Britain, as it is against the law to slander a company or person. The punishments of this can be a fine, or terms of imprisonment and community service. This sentence will depend on the severity of the crime.

The second type of defamation is Libel. Libel is very similar to slander, as it follow the same type of defamation, however, the difference between Slander and Libel is that libel is written. This means that someone has written the negative comments. This may be on news articles or messages, or any other means of writing. Libel has the same legal consequences as Slander, as the premise of the defamation is exactly the same.

Representation (False Advertising) -

Representation is the way in which I present my magazine, and present cars in things such as fact files and reviews to an audience. This means that I will need to make sure that I do not say that the drink can do anything it cannot, as this was be misrepresentation. The phrase is more commonly known as 'false advertising' as it is advertising something that the product can not physically do, which may be interpreted as misleading.

False advertisement may result in lawsuits as the company has claimed that the product can do something that it cannot. A good example of this is red bull's 'gives you wings' slogan which was taken to court for £16 million. This means that I would not be able to say that a car does anything that it cannot, or state any facts that are unreasonably false.

Ethical Issues - 

Ethical Issues are not always against the law. However, they need to be taken into consideration as they could affect how an audience takes content in an advertisement. Ethical issues are anything that could misrepresent or mislead an audience, and anything that could offend an audience and certain minorities as they may not be shown correctly in the advertisement or at all.

Racial (Ethical) - 

This is a more interesting subject for my magazine, as I will not have . At our disposal we have three people working on this promotion that can act in the video. We are all white people which may raise any problems included with the video. however, as long as we do not make race a specific focusing point or problem in our advertisement, we will not pass any ethical issues. This can be solved by only focusing on the guitar, and not the person in the video.

This can also be bypassed by using long sleeved clothing. This puts less of a highlight on the race of a person and more on the product in the advertisement. This problem is a large one in modern media issues, so we would need to make it very sure that we do not offend any minorities and will make sure that our advertisement will not have this issue at any points.

Gender (Ethical) - 

In my magazine, the focus is on both genders, but at a 70/30 male to female split. As much as this may appear as unfair towards one gender, this is completely justified as my target audience has this gender split from audience profiles. After a search, I found that the gender split was 70/30 for people's interest in cars and motorsport, so I will be suiting my magazine towards this.

However, I will not make my brand and magazine aimed towards one specific gender at all times, as this would be an issue. In order to combat this issue, I need to make sure that none of the elements of my magazine focus solely towards one gender, as my audience will not be entirely male. This is simply done by not making any involvements purely to one gender.

Offence (Ethical) - 

Offence has many categories that it could be interpreted as. The most known category of this is offensive language. This can be anything from swearing to slurring, and is not appropriate in an advertisement, or any element of media that is streamed to all ages. This is easy to dodge, however, as all we need to do is make sure that there is not language that will be of offense to anyone, which can be done with a simple double check.

Responsibility - 

In my magazine, I will want to spread awareness about driving safe. In order to promote this towards the audience, I will use a short tagline that says 'leave the racing for the track'.