National Viewers and Listeners Association
Mediawatch-UK logo as of 2012[update]
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| Motto | Campaigning for family values in the media |
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| Formation | 1965 |
| Legal status | Non-profit organisation |
| Purpose | Pressure group |
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Region served
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United Kingdom |
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Director
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Vivienne Pattison |
| Website | www.mediawatchuk.org.uk |
Mediawatch-UK, formerly known as the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association (National VALA or NVLA), is a pressure group in the United Kingdom, which campaigns against the publication and broadcast of media content that it views as harmful and offensive, such as violence, profanity, sex, homosexuality and blasphemy.
NVLA was founded in 1965 by Mary Whitehouse to succeed the earlier Clean-Up TV Campaign, which Whitehouse co-founded with her husband Ernest and the Reverend Basil and Norah Buckland early in the previous year. Mrs Whitehouse remained as the group's leader until 1994, when she was succeeded by John Beyer. NVLA changed its name to the current mediawatch-uk in 2001. Beyer resigned his post in July 2009; the current director is Vivienne Pattison.
Mediawatch-UK monitors broadcast output, publishes reports about programme content and responds to Government and other consultations on broadcasting policy, as well as arguing for parliamentary accountability for broadcasters and greater public involvement in broadcasting policy issues. The organisation is mainly concerned with taste and decency issues and ensuring that the broadcasting codes and guidelines are complied with.
Along with around 400 others Mediawatch-UK responded to a Home Office consultation concerning extreme pornography in December 2005. In the Mediawatch-UK response it was suggested that the possession of allegedly "hard-core" pornography, as currently classified R18 by the British Board of Film Classification and, therefore, legally sold in high street sex shops (R18 classification), should be included in the range of extreme pornography that is the subject of the Home Office consultation. It is proposed that possession of extreme material would become a criminal offence punishable by up to three years in prison. Mediawatch-UK are campaigning for the law on possession "to include a much wider range of pornographic imagery, such as R18 material".
Mediawatch-UK also responded to a Home Office consultation on the regulation of R18 videos, on a Department of Culture Media and Sport consultation on the future of the BBC, on the Office of Communications' Broadcasting Code and its Draft Annual Plan for 2006/7, on a House of Lords consultation on Religious Offences and much more.
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