Lo2 - Legal and Ethical.

It is important to adhere the below legal and ethical issues because they lead to large consequences such as court, bans or even prison. 
The following legal and ethical issues apply to magazines and newspapers. 


The obscene Publications Act 1959. 

This act covers materials that are obscene (indecent / offensive), including  not only sexually explicit materials but also violence and drug related materials. whether it's in a persons possession, published or broadcasted. The act is more likely to apply to research material rather than material actually transmitted because of stricter tests relating to hard and offence under the communications act 2003 and the Ofcom broadcasting code. This act is based on the fact that it's Illegal to publish content that may negatively influence readers. 

Link to my magazine. 

My target audience is 80% A,B,C1 and 20% C2,D,E. Mostly female, partly male, aged between 16-35 years old. Therefore, my magazine should not include advertisements based on explicit injured, abused horses as the younger half of my audience (16-19) may find this traumatizing. If these adverts were to be included they'd have to be animated or disregarding of any physical abuse so that no explicit elements are within the magazine. Secondly, I can adhere to this law by censoring swear words. Since my I'm doing an un-rehearsed interview with my friend Frankie there is a possibility that she could swear, therefore I could censor this so that my younger (16-17) audience aren't influenced or offended by the bad language.  


Libel Law

Publishing content about a person that can negatively effect their reputation, It's illegal to publish defamatory (harmful) content about a person or publish untrue information 

Link to my magazine 

I'll adhere to this law by not representing my models in a degrading or misleading way. For example, since my double page spread is based on my friend Frankie riding with her horse rocky, I could misrepresent her as being a bad rider by using bad images or my body copy could be based on her being bad at horse care, which is not true. Therefore, I'll have to ensure that I use body copy and images that she is comfortable with me using.  Secondly, I'll need to ensure that my facts and information are true when talking about the effects of things such as exceris, relating to my second double page spread 'excersize with evie.', to ensure that I do this i'll be collecting information from reliable sources such as 'EquiMed', which is a wrbsite based on the fitness of horses. 


Copyright

Gives the original creator the control over how their intellectual property is used. It ensures that the proper is not to be used without the creators permission. This act applies to all types of media regarding ideas, colours, logos, slogans and so on. 

Link to my magazine. 

I will have to get permission from Frankie to include her interview quotes within my body copy on my double page spread. Secondly, I may potentially use a cartoon graphic / silhouette of a horse on my 'Riding with Rocks' double page spread, therefore, depending on whether the image is free to use, I will have to gain permission from the property owner. Lastly, I'll have to get permission from owners of logos that I'll use such as the 'BedMax' logo, which is a brand of bedding for horses that I was considering using on the 'products' image section of my contents page. 



Law of contempt 
It is a criminal offense to publish content that poses a risk to justice in proceeding. Prevents magazines from publishing anything that is too sensationalist about a criminal case. 

Link to my magazine.

An example of something that I wouldn't be able to use in my magazine is the Thamesmead case. This case was based on the fact that a man and horse were both killed, after a 30 year old man was accused of dangerously driving, resulting in him crashing his car into the horse cart, leading to the death of both the horse and the rider. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/horse-cart-driver-car-crash-thamesmead-death-south-east-london-a8467931.html) This case was resolved in court in July 2018, however, if this case was still on going I would not be able to talk about it.