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Mass media in Great Britain

· Are legal, decent, honest and truthful;

· Are prepared with a sense of responsibility to the consumer and society; and

· Conform to the principles of fair competition as generally accepted in business.

The Authority includes among its activities monitoring advertisements to ensure their compliance with the Code and investigating complaints received directly from members of the public and competitors.

The advertising industry has agreed to abide by the Code and to back it up with effective sanctions. Free and confidential pre-publication advice is offered to assist publishers, agencies and advertisers. The Authority’s main sanction is the recommendation that advertisements considered to be in breach of the Code should not be published. This is normally sufficient to ensure that an advertisement is withdrawn or amended. The Authority also publishes monthly reports on the results of its investigations, naming the companies involved.

The Authority is recognised by the Office of Fair Trading as being the established means of controlling non-broadcast advertising. The Authority can refer misleading advertisements to the Director General of Fair Trading, who has the power to seek an injunction to prevent their publication.

News Agencies

The principal news agencies in Britain are Reuters, an international news organisation registered in London, the Press Association and Extel Financial.

Reuters

The oldest is “Reuters” which was founded in 1851. The agency employs some 540 journalists and correspondents in seventy countries and has links with about 120 national or private news agencies. The information of general news, sports, and economic reports is received in London every day and is transmitted over a network links and cable and radio circuits.

Reuters is a publicly owned company, employing 10,335 full-time staff in 79 countries. It has 1,300 staff journalists and photographers. The company served subscribers in 132 countries, including financial institutions; commodities houses; traders in currencies, equities and bonds; major corporations; government agencies; news agencies; newspapers; and radio and television stations.

Reuters has developed the world’s most extensive private leased communications network to transmit its services. It provides the media with general, political, economic, financial and sports news, news pictures and graphics, and television news. Services for business clients comprise constantly updated price information and news, historical information, facilities for computerised trading, and the supply of communications and other equipment for the financial dealing rooms. Information is distributed through video terminals and tele-printers. Reuters is the major shareholder in Visnews, a television news agency whose service reaches over 650 broadcasters in 84 countries.

The Press Association

The Press Association - the British and Irish national news agency – is co-operatively owned by the principal daily newspapers of Britain outside London, and the Irish Republic. It offers national and regional newspapers and broadcasters a comprehensive range of home news – general and parliamentary news, legal reports, and all types of financial, commercial and sports news. It also includes in its services to regional papers the world news from Reuters and Associated Press.

News is sent by satellite from London by the Press Association, certain items being available in Dataformat as camera –ready copy. Its “Newsfile” operation provides general news, sports and foreign news on screen to non-media as well as media clients by means of telephone and view data terminals. The photographic department offers newspapers and broadcasters a daily service of pictures. The News Features service supplies repoerts of local or special interest and grants exclusive rights to syndicated features. It also offers a dial-in graphics facility, as well as extensive cuttings and photograph libraries.

Extel Financial

Extel Financial supplies information and services to financial and business communities throughout the world. Based in London, it has a network of offices in Europe and the United States and direct representation in Japan and South-East Asia. Data is collected from all the world’s major stock exchanges, companies and the international press. The agency is a major source of reference material on companies and securities. It supplies a full range of data products on international financial matters. Up-to-the-minutes business and company news is bade available by the agency’s specialist financial news operations.

Other Agencies

The British press and broadcasting organisations are also catered for by Associated Press and United Press International, which are British subsidiaries of United States news agencies. A number of other British, Commonwealth and foreign agencies and news services have offices in London, and there are minor agencies in other city. Syndication of features is not as common in Britain as in some countries, but a few agencies specialise in this type of work.

New Printing Technology

The heavy production costs of newspapers and periodicals continue to encourage publishers to look for ways of reducing these costs, often by using advanced computer system to control editing and production processes. The “Front end” or “single stroking” system, for example, allows journalists or advertising staff to input “copy” directly into video terminal, and then to transform it automatically into computer-set columns of type. Although it is possible for these columns to be assembled electronically on a page-sized screen, turned into a full page, and made automatically into a plate ready for transfer to the printing press, at present very few such systems are in operation. Most involve the production of bromides from the computer setting; there are then pasted up into columns before being places in a plate –making machine.

The most advanced system presents opportunities for reorganisation, which have implications throughout a newspaper office and may give rise to industrial relations problems. Generally, and most recently in the case of national newspapers, the introduction of computerised system has led to substantial reduction in workforces, particularly, but not solely, among print workers.