AOB1.5; Legal and Ethical issues

There are several legal and ethical issues which affect T.V programme or film content and sets out guidelines for what is acceptable for their audience. The first of these is copyright

Copyright
This is set out to protect someone's literacy, dramatic, musical, artistic, and broadcast material from being copied by someone who wants to use the work as their own. Within the film and T.V. industry, copyright has several components e.g. the original screenplay. If someone was to produce the film then you would usually get the rights or at least permission to use the works which relate to the film. For example in the film I have looked at, High Crimes, everything connected with the film like the plot or original characters, even the name of the film itself, is the legal property of the film makers. This protects the film makers from other people profiting from their ideas without permission e.g film piracy, burning DVDs of the film to sell on. Copyright laws in America are very similar to the UK however they appear to be a little stricter on certain things such as, in Britain you are allowed to copy an image from the internet and use it on your desktop in America you are not.
The same would apply to Doctor Who which is particularly well known as a series but also for its spin off shows and then products like action figure toys, books etc. Without copyright the show's reputation could be damaged and it would not the same Doctor Who that we know and love.
If copyright did not exist then we would not have the high standards of creative film and T.V making that exist.

Defamation 
This is more relevant to the one show because it deals with real life current affairs and topics that need to be backed up with facts. It means that the one show is not able to say several things that could offend  or harm someone's reputation and therefore open itself to legal issues e.g being sued. In terms of being ethical it is very important that it is only factual or harmless opinion made by the presenters so that no one becomes upset by any of the comments made on the show. The main presenters on the show I watched were Chris Evans and Alex Jones. Both these people will have signed contracts to make sure they behave in a suitable way both on the show and outside of it as they have a duty to protect the BBC reputation.

BBC editorial guidelines 
The BBC has a duty to provide the highest quality creativity programmes while staying in line with the editorial and ethical standards. They therefore must be careful to balance out the quality of a programme and the freedom of expression with their responsibility. The BBC reflects certain values that its audience come to expect like honesty, reliability and fairness.  All the programmes and anyone connected with the BBC must meet these expectations.  For example Doctor Who is prime time family viewing so content be suitable for all ages as it is on before the watershed. The same applies to the One Show.

Certification 
The British Board Of Film Classification is a non government and independent body which is funded through people who submit films, video games and programmes which are to be released on DVD or Blu- ray. The recording act of 1984 means it is a criminal act for video content to not be classified. A works classification is based on the strength of several things the most common being language used, violence, sexual content, discrimination, drugs, horror and bad behaviour which is likely to be copied.

When it comes to the classification of 'The One Show' this would be very easy to work out it contains content suitable for all. With 'Doctor Who' I think it would be much harder because although it is broadcasted when anyone could be watching T.V, when it comes to it being on DVD, it would take some thought to what certification it should be. However with 'High Crimes' the BBFC has given it a 12. The film content contains no swearing and little violence.

In conclusion, it is clear that are lots of things that have to be considered from a legal and ethical point of view and on many levels as there are whole industries who deal with these issues and make sure film and T.V is broadcasted responsibly.