UK Spouse Visa Application: what defines a media company?

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There's a question on the UK entry clearance application about prior employment. Here's a screen shot...

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You work for a company that produces video commercials. This falls under the general definition of a 'content provider' and would be considered a 'media organisation'.

You are worried that disclosing this might make your application 'suspicious'.

I just don't want to appear more suspicious than necessary

In these types of questions they are trying to find out if you are engaged in an organisation that operates counter to the public welfare. The controlling technical reference is Paragraph 320 (19)...

The immigration officer deems the exclusion of the person from the United Kingdom to be conducive to the public good. For example, because the person’s conduct (including convictions which do not fall within paragraph 320(2)), character, associations, or other reasons, make it undesirable to grant them leave to enter.

For example, some media organisations have very close links with terrorist groups while others advocate the violent overthrow of a government. If your organisation is not described by this Paragraph, then there's nothing to worry about.

A best practices approach is to click the box and then provide the name of the organisation and the dates you worked there. They will look to see if the organisation is on their list of organisations that endanger the public welfare and if not, then they will move on to look at your other responses. There's nothing at all to worry about based on what you wrote.

Attempting to hide something, on the other hand, especially something that impacts Paragraph 320 can have grave consequences and there's no statute of limitations. For example, you are on the spouse track which means you'll generally qualify for a British passport after five years. If they ever find out that you failed to disclose something, they can (and do) revoke your passport. I took a course that covered nationality deprivation a few years back and learned that the only recourse is a full judicial review.

Technically, a commercial is a form of media, but I presume they want to know whether I have access to means of media distribution (which I don't)

Yes, media includes distribution and also providing content.

I am aware that spouse visa applicants are particularly prone to disproportionate anxiety during the application stage. Nonetheless, this site endorses the strategy of transparency and disclosure.

Important note: the OP is on a settlement track which is outside of our mandate (we're a travel site). However, the screen shot above also appears in all entry clearance applications, including Standard Visitor Visa applications. So the question is topical here from that angle. Specific questions about spouse visas that are not generic to all entry clearance applications should be posted in Expats http://expatriates.stackexchange.com/questions

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