Mini Documentray work- OFCOM

Unit 27 task 1

For my documentary will be “Do you think that Marijuana should be legalized?”

Ofcom:

Section 2: Harm and offence:

To ensure that generally accepted standards are applied to the content of television and radio services so as to provide adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion in such services of harmful and/ or offensive material.

Ofcoms broadcasting rules state that not only are they protecting under-eighteens, but also the rules are also to provide adequate protection for adults. If you use facts, they have to be 100% true and be backed up. The rules are only here to prevent harmful and offensive material being shown to the wrong audience.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/harmoffence/

Section 3: Crime:

To ensure that material likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder is not included in television or radio services.

Ofcoms broadcasting for crime state that footage that might encourage crime is not allowed to be shown on television simply because they don’t want people to try and copy what they see and get arrested. This means because smoking ‘weed’ is illegal as long as we edit our footage to not give any influential ideas we can in fact have people smoking in our documentary.

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/broadcasting/broadcast-codes/broadcast-code/crime/

BBC Guidelines:

Section 5: Harm and offence:

The BBC editorial guidelines state that harm and offence, covers a lot more than Ofcoms, with there subheading being “Alcohol, Smoking, Solvent Abuse and Illegal `Drug use”.

The use of illegal drugs, the abuse of drugs, smoking, solvent abuse and the misuse of alcohol:

                  Must not be featured in content made primarily for children unless there is strong editorial justification

                  Must generally be avoided and must not be condoned, encouraged or glamorized in any programmes broadcast pre-watershed or on radio when children are particularly likely to be in our audience, or in online content likely to appeal to a significant proportion of children, unless there is editorial justification

                  Must not be condoned, encouraged or glamorized in other content likely to be widely seen, heard or used by children and young people, unless there is editorial justification.

- After reading the rules and regulations, I understand that although the subject of the documentary is about Marijuana, it’s not illegal to talk about it; it’s just illegal to smoke it on camera. The footage in which I put in the documentary must not be encouraging and must be generally condoning.