Before the magazine can be punished and consumed by the reader there are several legal and ethical issues that must be checked beforehand. Two of the main bodies that handle the regulations of media publishing are the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), and the Advertisement Standards Authority (ASA), which are both based in the UK. Some of the main legal areas include; copyright, the right to privacy, seditious libel and criminal libel, ethical issues include; discrimination and accuracy,
Copyright issues:
This is a form of intellectual property, it enables the creator of content the power to exclusive rights of their work. Therefore if copyright is broken they will be compensated for their intellectual effort. When publishing the magazine we need to guarantee that none of the content we publish breaches any copyright laws. If we do plan to use copyrighted context, such as image we must seek permission from the original creator.
Before creating the magazine there are several areas that need to be researched. When using content within the magazine that was not created by us we have to contact the original creators and seek permission to use such content. If this is not done the magazine can come under criticism and it is highly possible that we will face a fine. Additionally with the copyright law we will have to prove that we have permission from the content creator that we can use their material.
PCC/IPSO- What needs to be considered?
When producing the music magazine I have to consider the editors code, this can be found on the official press complaints commission website. The first thing in the editors code states is that those who contribute to making the magazine have a duty to maintain the highest professional standards. This connects to all areas of the magazine including the content and the way we handle subscribers information need to be dealt with in the most specialised way. This sets a professional benchmark guaranteeing our readers quality reliability and experience.
Additional information that is stated in the editors code that must be applied to the magazine development is having to apply in the code, including all highlighted areas to both print and online-based material. This means that all editors will have to check through information that we publish to make sure we are within the guidelines of the code we also have the responsibility of dealing with the complaints directly from the press complaints commission. These can be about copyright issues or privacy breaches.
Intellectual Property:
Another area that needs to be considered is including intellectual property within the magazine. Intellectual property is protected by patents, copyright and trademarks which permit people to earn financial benefit from what they invent or create. An example of this would be using company logos such as Facebook or twitter. The magazine would have to gain certain permissions to use the logos. With some companies a financial agreement might have to be made. Therefore if we wanted to write an article on a specific festival, the company that runs the festival will ask to have an advertising feature or competition that will gain them a profit from giving their permission to appear in the magazine.
Safe working Practices – Image and Software “safe working practices”
When taking and editing the images for the front cover and double page spread I had to take into consideration risk assessment. This meant I had to look at all the individual ‘safe working practices’ and how they could affect the final images.
Image Risk Assessment
Before taking the images I needed to make sure that the model gave their full permission to be photographed and the image being published both online and in print media. I found that the best way to gain permission was to get the model to sign the consent sheet. By gaining permission through this method the magazine has declared proof of a signed document; this means that if there are any future legal difficulties it would not be the magazine at fault.
When deciding on a location for the shoot to take place, a risk assessment had to be conducted to guarantee both the artist and the people who are taking the images are safe. Areas that should be looked at should highlight possible hazards such as cabling on the studio floor.
Software Risk Assessment
When editing the images that I had taken in the studio I wanted to keep a professional high image quality. This meant that I looked into different ways of guaranteeing that the final images would have no evidence of resizing pixelation. I found that the most useful method of resizing images and also keeping the original high quality pixel was to use the ‘Transform Tool’ on Adobe Photoshop. This technique is when resizing the image to hold down the ‘Shift’ key on the keyboard. The purpose of this tool is to keep the dimensions of the image the same so they are not stretched and distorted which can in turn affect pixel quality.
To maintain consistency throughout Fierce magazine I wanted to make sure that all of the colours were the same on adobe Photoshop is the ‘eyedropper tool’ that helped choose and find the colour of an object. Then you have the opportunity to save the chosen colour into a swatches palette. This meant that every time I created a new text or object to be inserted into the magazine pages. To find the magazines colour I had to go into my ‘Saved Swatches’ palette and choose the colour I wanted to use. This sped up the colour choosing process as well as keeping a professional standard for the magazine.
Charlotte Goodliffe 