New reporting regulations and impact

What you can expect from recently proposed changes for the public and for powerful companies.

11:32 01 May 2013

 

There are many differing views with the recent attempted changes for reporting regulation. Currently newspapers are calling for the removal of Parliament’s control in favour of a different regulator entity established by a retired Supreme Court Judge and containing a representative for each involved group’s interest.  What can be expected from this change, and how might it impact financial segments such as credit card companies?

 

• More variety—newspapers may have more variety to print than they have had previously

 

• Controversy—removing the political interests from the papers may allow greater scrutiny of the government, and other powerful institutions like credit card companies.

 

 

• Pandering—since it’s unclear if individual articles would need to be approved, there may be pandering to certain entities, and the possibility of corruption in the regulating body as is the case with any powerful group.

 

• Complaints—these would be more difficult to lodge which means it would be much more difficult to enact change unless all parties work together, and depending on circumstances could favour businesses like credit card companies over the interests of a few individuals.

 

• Control—increased power in the regulatory body to require corrections and apologies when necessary instead of trying to direct those things. 

 

• Freedom—limiting the regulatory body to a group of individuals comprised of all interest parties should, in theory, allow greater freedom in reporting and the ability to focus on the types of issues that the newspaper readers are interested in; ones which directly affect them. 

 

• Subscriber input—more weight to the opinions of the newspaper and magazine readers on industry proposals.

 

Newspapers are supporting these proposed changes; however, the Hacked Off group feels that additional changes are needed, such as a clearly independent governing body, fines for intentional wrongs and increased attention to the public sector to ensure media acts in the public’s interest than risk the influence of powerful companies such as credit card companies, banks, or political entities.