Music Video Regulation - Media Studies A Level

1. MUSIC VIDEO
REGULATION
By Ellie Lester

2. BANNED MUSIC VIDEOS
"Just Lose It" by Eminem - Michael Jackson personally
called Eminem's representation of him "inappropriate and
disrespectful.” As a result Black Entertainment Television
banned the video, which at one point depicted Michael with
no nose, on a bed with children. While Pee-wee Herman,
Vanilla Ice and Madonna are also ridiculed within this video,
it was worse for Michael who was fighting child molestation
charges at the time. (https://youtu.be/9dcVOmEQzKA)
"Born Free" by M.I.A. – A young boy gets shot in the head
and another boy is blown to pieces in this video which
depicts a redhead genocide. The violence as well as nudity
encouraged YouTube to ban the video, though it has since
been made available on the site. Thousands of people
have debated racist connotations around this video.
(https://youtu.be/N6tMRhAi0x0)

3. WHO IS IN CHARGE OF
REGULATING MUSIC VIDEOS?
There is an organisation known as the BBFC that controls
regulations for music videos which they don’t tend to add
age restricting rules unless it contains adult-content.
Recently, there was a consultation launched by the
government to restrict the sexualisation of children in
music videos. The outcome was that the Video Recordings
Act should be amended to restrict the likelihood of this
sort of content surfacing through media.
OFCOM regulate what goes on our TV screen- if people do
not like what they are seeing they can complain directly of
OFCOM. OFCOM operates under the Communications Act
2003.
YouTube can decide whether an artists video is
inappropriate for their website. This means that the artist
cannot upload it to their official channel, however the
video may find its way onto the website through other
unofficial channels.

4. DIFFICULTIES WITH
IMPLEMENTING REGULATIONS
Online content can be published freely and anyone can produce explicit content,
so this is a clear issue to the BBFC as it’s difficult to stop people from doing this.
To fight this, they have been requesting members of the online community to
report any content that might be considered as unlawful or explicit.
Another problem with implementing regulations is the fact that children can create
fake accounts by changing their date of birth when signing up, this allows them to
watch any content they want with no restrictions. For example, a 10 year old will
still watch a 15 rated video.
Age regulations are specifically in place to stop younger children from accessing
explicit video’s that would either influence or upset them and it is still questioned
today whether YouTube is doing enough to protect children from such viewings.
Unfortunately, you can’t always protect them because there are some people who
are capable of hacking such systems and websites so that they are able to upload
video’s that would not normally be accepted by websites.