New regulations needed to cover media convergence

According to the Foundation for Community Educational Media (FCEM)’s study on ‘Media Ethics and the new media regulation model in the convergent media era’, it is more difficult to regulate the media in this complex era of media convergence when it is not just about the technology. 

The study which also had support from the National Broadcasting and Telecommunication Commission (NBTC), looked at several models of media regulation in the convergent media era in three countries – South Korea, Indonesia, and France. It found that South Korea was seen to have a single regulatory body to regulate all media platforms, while France and Indonesia still had separate regulatory bodies for different media platforms. Even though South Korea has a single regulatory body to control different media, they have separated the rules between content regulation and infrastructure regulation. 

France has media regulatory bodies for each media platform and the regulators follow EU directives. Meanwhile, media regulation in Indonesia belongs to the government yet overlaps between governmental and industry regulation. 

The common problem from the three different models of media regulation in the converging media era is causing a gap in new media regulation. 

The NTBC also hosted a seminar on ‘Lessons learnt from news presentation on social media: infringing on human rights’. Nattha Komolvadhin, vice president of the News Broadcasting Council of Thailand, said media ethics must always be embedded into the media working process, since in the news gathering process to news presenting, it does not matter which platforms they are on. 

“All stakeholders must be concerned, reporters, editors, media owners, and audiences. The challenge of media regulation is increasing according to the advanced and converged technologies. For example, technology allows reporters to do live broadcasts at any time, therefore, being a gatekeeper must be a skill for each individual reporter. And, in this scenario, the media regulation is more complex,” Nattha said.

Mana Treelayapewat, dean of the University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce’s School of Communication Arts and committee member of the National Press Council of Thailand, said that currently, the five major media associations and councils including Thai Journalists Association, Thai Broadcast Journalists Association, The News Broadcasting Council of Thailand, the National Press Council of Thailand, and Society of Online News Providers have been working on developing self-regulation among media across different platforms in the converging media era. 

Apart from journalists, currently, social media and new media allow anyone who can create content to possibly infringe on human rights. This is an area of great concern. The solution starts with the media organisation, news agency, and reporter to strongly rely on media ethics and codes of conduct no matter what media platform they are, social media, new media, online, and mainstream media. 

“To reduce the infringement of human rights, not only done by journalists but regular people as well, as there are a lot of citizen journalists and where anyone can create content, then anyone can infringe on someone’s human rights,” Mana said.

Pipope Panitchpakdi, a freelance journalist, said that currently the infringement of human rights has been done by both journalists and citizen journalists. The regulation that the five media organisations are working on can be used as guidelines for citizen journalists as well. 

“In the era of media convergence, media literacy is the key. But it still requires punishment for those who intend to infringe on human rights,” Pipope said.