1. introduction

1.1 This website (“the Site”) is operated by Media Parents Limited (Company No. 07221757) whose registered office is at Unit 56 Ditton Priors Industrial Estate, Station Road, Bridgnorth, Shropshire WV16 6SS (“we” “us” “our”).

1.2 We provide a platform for TV professionals to connect with other TV professionals and to promote flexible working opportunities in the media industry.

1.3 These terms and conditions (“the Terms”) apply to the use of the Site and shall be read in conjunction with the Privacy Policy and any other incidental agreements listed on the Site which you may be required to agree to from time to time (“Supplemental Agreements”) and shall together form the agreement between you and us (“the Agreement”).

1.4 It is important that you read and understand these Terms and the Supplemental Agreements before using the Site. By accessing or using the Site you agree to be legally bound by these Terms, as they may be modified from time to time. If you do not agree to these terms and conditions, please do not use the Site.

1.5 We reserve the right to change these Terms and the Supplemental Agreements at any time. Amendments will take effect when posted on the Site.

1.6 You acknowledge and agree that if you are an individual then once we have commenced the provision of our services you shall not be entitled to cancel the Agreement under the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 or by such other consumer regulation as may apply from time to time.

2. our services

2.1 We provide registered users with the platform to create their own profile on the Site.

2.2 We provide registered users the opportunity to contact and connect with other registered users and to contribute to the Media Parents forum and message board.

2.3 We provide users with the opportunity to browse the Site.

3. changes to service

We reserve the right to improve, amend, or suspend the service provided on the Site at any time without notice.

4. registration

4.1 If you wish to create a profile page as a freelancer or an employer you are required to pay the subscription fee and to register with us by completing and submitting the form on our “registration” page, and you warrant that you are over 18 years of age.

4.2 Once you have registered an account with us, you can log into your profile page using your email address and a unique password which will be sent to you by us via email.

4.3 For the purposes of verifying your identity we shall use the data provided by you to establish the veracity of all the registration details you have provided when registering with the Site, and your entitlement to use the Site and the services.

4.4 If you register your details you are solely responsible for the accuracy, legality, currency and compliance of such detail and will be solely liable for false, misleading, inaccurate, infringing or other actionable material contained or referred to therein.

4.5 We reserve the right to terminate suspend or restrict accounts without notice to you should you commit any breach of the Agreement or in our reasonable discretion we believe it is your intention to commit a breach of the Agreement or we believe you are acting contrary to the spirit of the Agreement.

5. payment and fees

5.1 We must receive payment of the whole of the subscription fee before the services are available to you.

5.2 You can make secure payment for subscription fees via the Site. Such charges can be made via your PayPal account or by cheque or bank transfer payable to Media Parents Limited. You can contact subs@mediaparents.co.uk for more detail.

5.3 We reserve the right to refuse any subscription application at our discretion. In the event that we reject a subscription application after we have received the subscription fee we shall within fourteen (14) days from the registered date refund the fee.

5.4 If you are an employer subscriber accounts last for a period of one (1) year from the date of registration. If you register a talent account the account lasts for one (1) month or one (1) year from the date of registration subject to the payment of the relevant fee.

5.5 Subscription accounts will renew automatically and we shall be entitled to charge the then prevailing rate for each new period unless you choose to terminate your account by clicking the “unsubscribe” or “delete” buttons on your account prior to the end of the then current period.

5.6 You shall be entitled to cancel your subscription at any time but you shall not be entitled to a refund of your subscription fees (or any amount thereof which corresponds to an unexpired portion of your membership) in the event that you no longer wish to be a registered user.

6. general conduct

6.1 Registered users may only create and maintain one profile page.

6.2 All registered users must have a bona fide interest in connecting with other media professionals and must have at least three (3) years professional experience within the media industry.

6.3 We grant you a limited licence to access and make use of the Site, but not to modify it, or any part of it, or otherwise exploit it for any commercial purpose or gain except for those specific purposes set out in this Agreement or otherwise with our express written consent.

6.4 Registered talent users may only apply for jobs advertised on the Site directly through the Site.

6.5 You must not use the Site in any way that causes, or is likely to cause, the Site or access to it to be interrupted, damaged or impaired in any way. You understand that you are responsible for all electronic communications and content sent from your computer to us and you must use the Site for lawful purposes only.

6.6 You must not use the Site for any fraudulent purposes, or in connection with a criminal offence or other unlawful or immoral activity, to send, use or reuse any content or material that is illegal, offensive, abusive, indecent, defamatory, obscene or menacing or that will infringe copyright, trademark, confidence, privacy or any other right; or is otherwise injurious to third parties, or objectionable, or which consists of or contains software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings or any “spam” – to cause annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety.

6.7 You must not use the Site in any way which may disrupt the Media Parents community or cause problems for other users and Media Parents staff, which may be detrimental to the Media Parents business and or generally use the Site in any way which in our reasonable opinion is inconsistent with the spirit of the Agreement including without limitation sharing information on the Site with non-registered third parties.

7. water cooler

If you believe that anyone has infringed your or a third party’s copyright on the Site, if you have infringed a third party’s copyright or you find any material on the Site offensive or otherwise in breach of these Terms then you must inform us immediately in writing atfeedback@mediaparents.co.uk.

8. information and content provided by you

8.1 Any information and content posted, uploaded, or otherwise sent by any means by you to the Site shall be legal, decent, honest and truthful, shall not infringe any third party’s rights, shall not be obscene, blasphemous or defamatory and shall not contain any viruses or other malicious computer programming routines. Without limiting the above, all information you provide shall be accurate and complete

8.2 You agree that you will not publish your contact information or any other information or data in the publicly-accessible parts of the Site. You agree that you will not publish the contact information or the information of any other person in the publicly-accessible parts of the Site (whether or not such persons are users of the Site) or elsewhere, or communicate such information to any other person whether in electronic or any other format.

8.3 Any information provided by you to us will be used by us in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998 and our Privacy Policy.

8.4 You waive all moral rights you have in any content and information provided by you to the fullest extent permitted by law.

9. employer feedback

9.1 Without limiting any other provisions of these Terms, registered employers which have via the Site, engaged the services of any freelancer(s) shall be entitled to leave feedback on the relevant talent profile page(s). All such feedback must relate directly to the freelancer or freelancers in question and to the work undertaken.

9.2 Users with a talent account may not edit or adapt any employer feedback which is posted in accordance with the provisions of clause 9.1 but may “opt out” of the services or may remove any such feedback in its entirety.

10. your licence to us

By submitting content and information to us as described above you agree to grant us a non-exclusive license and all the necessary rights throughout the world to reproduce, edit, change, copy, adapt and otherwise make such content available on the Site.

11. copyright and other intellectual property controlled by us.

11.1 All content and all compilation of content included on the Site which is not provided by you, including but not limited to text, graphics, logos, icons, photographs and images, audio clips, digital files, data compilations and software, is our property or is licensed by us and is protected by copyright, database and trade mark right laws in England and internationally.

11.2 You may download, extract and/or re-utilise parts of the contents of the Site subject to the Terms.

11.3 For the avoidance of doubt you may not utilise any data mining, robots or similar data gathering and extraction tools to extract (whether once or many times) for re-utilisation of any substantial parts of the Site without our express written consent. You may not create and/or publish your own database that features substantial parts of the Website without our express written consent. You will indemnify us against any loss, damages, costs, expenses (including reasonably legal fees) or other claims arising from any breach of the above warranties you commit.

12. links

12.1 We have no control over the content of third party sites and cannot guarantee the reliability of any links to third party sites nor can we provide any guarantees or accept any liability in respect of the content on such third party sites.

[12.2 You may not create hyperlinks to the Site without our prior written consent. All such permitted hyperlinks must make it clear that the hyperlink is to our Site and that it is in no way affiliated to any third party.]

13. security

13.1 You are solely responsible in all respects for all use of and for protecting the confidentiality of your account and password which may be given to or selected by you for use on the Site. You must immediately notify us of any unauthorised use of them or any other breach of security.

13.2 Any losses incurred or sustained by you in transmitting information shall be borne solely and exclusively by you and in no event shall any such losses in whole or in part be borne by us. If you are using a public computer, you must sign out when you have finished using the Site.

14. compliance with laws

You agree to comply with all applicable laws, statutes and regulations concerning your use of the Site.

15. suspension and termination of membership.

We reserve the right to terminate or suspend any aspect of your membership without notice or refund to you should you commit any breach of the Agreement or in our reasonable discretion we believe it is your intention to commit a breach of the Agreement or we believe you are acting in a way which is contrary to the spirit of our networking group.

16. liability

16.1 We accept no liability for any failure to maintain the Site. We shall not be liable to you by reason of any representation (unless fraudulent) and all warranties, conditions or other terms, implied by law are excluded to the fullest extent permissible. We shall not be liable for any loss of goodwill or reputation, profit or any indirect, special or consequential loss, damage, costs, expenses or other claims (whether caused by our negligence, servants or agents or otherwise) which arise out of or in connection with the provision of the material by you.

16.2 Your acceptance of these Terms also acts as a general release of Media Parents and any of its subsidiaries (and all of their officers, directors, agents and employees) from any liability for any claims, loss, and damages (both direct and indirect, including loss of profits, goodwill and business opportunity) arising out of or in any way connected to your use of the Site.

16.3 Notwithstanding the foregoing, nothing in this Agreement is intended to limit any rights you might have under applicable local law or other statutory rights that may not be excluded nor in any way to exclude or limit our liability to you for any death or personal injury resulting from our negligence.

17. indemnity

You will indemnify us against any loss, damages, costs, expenses (include reasonable legal fees) or other claims arising from any breach by you of any of the warranties and any other term of the Agreement.

18. access to the site

We will do everything we can to ensure that availability of the Site will be uninterrupted and that transmissions will be error-free. However, this cannot be guaranteed. The Site may be occasionally suspended or restricted to allow for repairs, maintenance or the introduction of a new facility or service. We will attempt to limit the frequency and duration of any such interruption.

19. notices

Except as otherwise stated, any notices you wish to send to us should be e-mailed to Media Parents at admin@mediaparents.co.uk. Any notices that we may wish to draw to your attention will be displayed on our Site.

20. confidential information

We and you shall endeavour to prevent the disclosure, publication or dissemination of the other’s confidential information and shall not use, reproduce, distribute, disclose or otherwise disseminate such confidential information except in connection with the performance of obligations under these Terms.

21. electronic communication

When you visit the Site or send emails to us, you are communicating with us electronically. We communicate with you by email or by posting notices on the Site. For contractual purposes, you consent to receiving communications from us electronically and you agree that all agreements, notices, disclosures and other communications that we provide to you electronically satisfy any legal requirement that such communications be in writing.

22. events beyond our reasonable control

We will not be held responsible for any delay or failure to comply with our obligations under these conditions if the delay or failure arises from any cause that is beyond our reasonable control.

23. costs and legal fees

In any action or proceeding to enforce rights under this Agreement, the prevailing party will be entitled to recover costs and legal fees.

24. law and jurisdiction

This Agreement (and any dispute, controversy, proceedings or claim of whatever nature in relation to them) shall be governed and interpreted in accordance with English law and the English courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction in relation thereto.

25. invalidity

If any part of the terms of this Agreement is unenforceable (including any provision in which we exclude our liability to you) the enforceability of any other part of these conditions will not be affected.

26. entire agreement

This Agreement contains the entire agreement between us relating to the subject matter covered and supersedes any previous agreements, arrangements, undertakings or proposals, written or oral, between us in relation to such matters or any statements made to you by any person, including (without limitation) any of our employees or agents. Save for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, we shall have no liability for any such representation being untrue or misleading.

27. assignment

We shall be entitled to assign, transfer or sub-contract or in any way make over the benefit or burden of the Agreement to a third party.

28. no waiver

A waiver by us of any terms of the Agreement in a particular instance shall not be deemed or construed to be a waiver of such term or condition for the future or affect our rights in respect of any subsequent breach of the terms of this Agreement. All rights and remedies contained in this Agreement shall be distinct, separate and cumulative and no action or inaction by us shall operate to exclude or deprive us of any other rights allowed by law.

29. third party rights

No third party shall be deemed under the Agreement to have enforceable rights by virtue of the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties Act) 1999.

30. nature of agreement

This Agreement shall not constitute a partnership, agency or joint venture between the parties.

On Thursday 22^nd April Channel 4 gave a day-long Editorial Ethics Masterclass for researchers, APs, PDs, PMs, SPs and the odd Exec, with the aim of sharing best practice and giving a grounding in ethics to independent producers and freelancers.  It was Chaired by Peter Dale, with Julian Bellamy kicking off proceedings.  Here is some of the information I took away from it, and there are links to C4’s independent producer handbook, the Ofcom guidelines and the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines at the end.  Channel 4 are keen to suggest that the notes here are meant as a complement to the Independent Producer Handbook, not a replacement for it, so please do read the good book.

Part One : TRUST

Kevin Sutcliffe (C4 Deputy Head of News & Current Affairs) spoke as the voice of dogged experience on Ofcom rulings and being taken to court by contributors.  His main points were to conduct yourself responsibly from the outset of a production in any form of CORRESPONDENCE – from initial calls, to letters, emails and notebooks.  In an investigation any of this can be called and used as evidence so be careful how you represent yourself, your company and your broadcaster : “All documents continue to exist, they can be found and investigated”.

Sutcliffe said that a PITCH document which contains biased content is likely to stop a Commissioning Editor from seeing you as it reflects that you are not likely to be fair-minded in your programme-making.  C4 he said wants pitch docs which are modulated and fair, with caveats.

Be mindful of how you are representing yourself and C4 in the DEVELOPMENT PERIOD, and how you reflect back to C4 about your CONTRIBUTORS.  When approaching contributors, producers have a responsibility to fairly reflect the way a film is described, and efforts should be made to ensure that emails / letters being sent out by different team members to different contributors are consistent in their content.

In everything your HOUSEKEEPING should be methodical.  In the event of an investigation everything on a production can be scrutinised, from your notebooks to your rushes.  When you are under pressure from a more senior team member to deliver on a particular storyline, it’s worth keeping in the back of your mind that in the event of an investigation it’s your interview technique and handling of contributors that will be analysed in the rushes, so the buck will stop with you.

The mantra for the day was unquestionably “IF IN DOUBT REFER UP” as soon as possible, through your Exec to the Comm Ed and / or a C4 lawyer.  C4 has a duty lawyer on call at all times through the C4 switchboard.

Hamish Thomson (C4 Lawyer, Legal & Compliance) stressed that producers must update participants if and when the remit of a programme changes.  (He also spoke on defamation which I’ll cover elsewhere).  Participants should be made aware of who they’re juxtaposed against in the film as this could affect INFORMED CONSENT.

TRUST / INFORMED CONSENT – QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF:

If you don’t feel that a contributor is giving a truly informed consent, ask yourself what don’t they know, and why don’t they know it?

Have you edited the material fairly? Have you distorted views? Changed the sequence of events?

Does the programme make a criticism of anyone? If people are criticized in your film then they most probably will be owed a right of reply.

Secret filming and doorstepping – read the producers guidelines below and seek advice at the earliest opportunity.

You have a responsibility of trust both to the contributors in your show, and to the viewers.  The viewers will trust that a programme will not be faked, so refer up if in any doubt. In making any programme you should read the Viewer Trust Guidelines, section 7A of the Producer Handbook.

Katie Bailiff (Head of Programmes, Century Films) said to ask yourself as a safety check “What might the tabloid headline be if things go wrong on a production?”

INFORMED CONSENT : beware of a programme set up by someone else – you can never discuss the nature of a programme too many times with contributors.

FACT CHECK AS YOU GO : if you are making a programme in which contributors refer to other indentifiable characters, you are going to need to fact check with all of these people to avoid defamation.  One tip is to make a family tree of your contributor’s family so you can fact check with people if they have been mentioned.  Keep checking your facts and access, as “assumption is the mother of all cock-ups”.

ON CAMERA CONSENT : this should include a description from the programme-maker of what the programme is whilst the contributor listens, in addition to the contributor’s verbal consent.

Handling a VIEWING WITH CONTRIBS PRE-TX :  ALWAYS check this your Comm Ed before it happens, as pre-TX viewings only usually happen in exceptional circumstances.  Safeguard the editorial control of your film by thanking the contributors for coming along to watch and “pick up on factual inaccuracies”.  The editorial control of the film always remains with the broadcaster.

COMING SOON: PRIVACY

Channel 4 & 5 Handbook : http://www.independentproducerhandbook.co.uk/

Ofcom guidelines: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/tv/ifi/

BBC Editorial Guidelines: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/

if you want to attend the next Channel 4 Editorial Ethics day then please reply to the thread on the Media Parents watercooler: http://www.mediaparents.co.uk/forum/