The Effect of Legal and Ethical Issues

When producing content for television and film, the people involved must be aware that there are many issues to take into account and ensure they do not break various rules of broadcasting. For example, the One Show, High Crimes and Doctor Who must ensure they do not have copyrighted material in the programmes, the most likely of which to feature being music, and must therefore ensure the correct fees have been payed to the owners of these copyrighted materials before using them. Copyright applies to any medium and is a legal constraint under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. This means that you must not reproduce copyright protected work in another medium without permission. This includes, publishing photographs on the internet, making a sound recording of a book, a painting of a photograph and so on. Copyright of music applies when it is set down in any permanent form. Usually different types of copyright apply to songs, the composer will have the copyright to that song, the lyricist owns literary rights to the lyrics separately as they are considered literary work and the producer of the recorded work will own the copyright of the recorded track.

There are also less straightforward, more specific legal and ethical issues that must considered. One of which that may affect the One Show is representation of tribal peoples. There are various areas of this to then consider, the first of which being obtaining consent. The filmmakers must get full consent from the tribespeople and agree to any limitations on filming, ensuring that the tribes people understand the nature of their contribution, how it will be used and the potential impact of their contribution. A second area is accuracy, i.e. the filmmakers must not knowingly represent the tribe in a manner that does not reflect their daily life without addressing so, therefore misleading the audience. However, this is merely an ethical issue, while not illegal to stray from these guidelines, out of a basis of morality and both emotional and physical protection of the tribespeople, broadcasters and filmmakers agree to adhere to them. There are laws that limit content also, one of which being against defamation/libel where an individual can sue for any damage caused to them by broadcast material, the broadcaster must then provide decent evidence to back up what was broadcast in order to defend from this. One issue that may affect Doctor Who specifically is the 9pm watershed and what content they may show, obviously depending on what time they broadcast. As Doctor Who is broadcast at 7 pm and is aimed at an audience of all ages (therefore including quite young viewers) the creators and producers must be aware of the levels of violence and sexual content as well as the graphic nature of this and use of bad language. The issues addressed are not under any kind of legal constraint. They are under the BBC editor's guidelines, which are merely a code of practice that the employees of the BBC, and most other television companies, adhere to.

Although an American film, High Crimes is still affected by the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). This is a non-government body funded by the film industry that is responsible for national classification and censorship of films in the UK. Therefore to be shown in the UK, High Crimes must undergo classification by the BBFC. The BBFC analyses areas of a film’s content such as violence, sexual content, horror, language, imitable material, theme, drugs and discrimination. From the levels of these fields in the film, a classification can be made. As High Crimes is a thriller, common themes throughout these are sex, violence and bad language, as well as the plot usually involving more mature subject matter. Although High Crimes features all of these, the way they are presented (such as more implied violence rather than graphic) allow the film to receive a 12 rating from the BBFC. Although the BBFC does not affect the initial broadcast of Doctor Who, when released on DVD the BBFC will classify it for the release.