Media Laws: Regulations and Ethics in Mass Media

Media Laws

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Media laws refers to the norms by which governments controls mass media. These
regulations are the pool of variety of ethical standards and laws that influence media work. It
deals with the legal mandate of entertainment, broadcasting, culture, telecommunication and
covers everything that are within the ambit of analogue media (Sarnelli and Kobibi, 2017). Issues
that are covered under media law includes privacy, employment, defamation, intellectual
property and commercial contracts. The practice of media law involves various legal issues that
arise during consumption or production of different type of media(Duffy, 2018). This project
covers the defence requirements which are provided under defamation law and further covers
provisions relating to privacy rights.
MAIN BODY
Question 1
(a) What defence in defamation law can protect a reporter's published criticism of a football
player's quality?
Defamation refers to the act of communicating false publication of statement about a
individual that injures the reputation of a person in the eyes of third person without the consent
of injured person. Legislation describes it in specific ways that includes libel which means
written defamation and slander which means spoken defamation.(Fombad and Balule, 2018)
The defence which are available under defamation law to protect reporter's criticism
about the Brown's playing quality is laid down under section 3 of Defamation Act, 2013 which
deals with the defence of Honest Opinion. (Lewis, 2018) It refers to the fair comment defence
where the defendant can show that her or his words or actions were merely a opinion that a
honest person could hold, which are based on available facts at that time. Here, the burden of
proof lies on the claimant to state that an opinion hold was not honest at the time when it was
expressed.
(b) Explain the essential requirements for defence under defamation law and whether newspaper
editor can met such conditions in case scenario?
The above mentioned defence of Honest opinion is appropriate defence on the part of
reporter to use it as a defence, when legal consequences arose between him and Brown. The
provisions of section 3, of Defamation Act 2013 lays down states certain conditions under which
defence can be claimed for defamation. First, condition requires that the statement must be the