Right Winged & Left Winged Newspapers

The Daily Mail clearly expresses their right winged political preference through their heading, making cause for concern on the number of migrants entering the UK, typically the view of right winged parties. 

The Guardian manages to express their left winged political views by producing an article on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, actively and blatantly criticising Republicans who are dominantly right winged.  

Case Studies: Madeline McCann VS Shannon Matthews

·         Find examples of language used in each of the pieces to describe the parents of both children. How does this language differ? What are the messages and values on social class? (10 marks)

In the first case study, the mother of Madeline McCann is described as “traumatised” after losing her daughter, making the reader feel a sense of sympathy towards Kate McCann (the mother of Madeline McCann) and the rest of the family. Contrary to this, Shannon Matthews’ abduction is described as “alleged” and the investigators are “suspicious of her mother. There seems to be a difference in the way these two mothers are treated by investigators, once showing sympathy and remorse whilst the other is suspicion and a lack of trust. This may perhaps be a result of their backgrounds and social classes. Madeline McCann’s family come from a middle or upper middle class family with parents having reputable careers. The family's social grade may be either an A or a B. This contrasts the way Shannon Matthews' family was seen and treated, as her mother was known to have had multiple partners with the majority of her children having different families, she is not generally someone who can be seen as trusting. The family's social grade is E as they claim benefits, a form of welfare received from the government. The state of her family and their attitude post Shannon's alleged abduction did not fit with how a family would typically react to such an incident. Perhaps the higher social classes that demand a certain amount of respect would give off the impression that they are trustworthy, unlike those who belong in the lower social classes who are stereotyped as being scammers, thieves, deadbeats etc. are not to be trusted and everything they say should be taken with a grain of salt. 

• Analyse the choice of pictures used in terms of framing, shot type and mise en scene. Compare their representations of the social class of the two families. (10 marks)

The image used to show the McCanns is a shot of the mother playing with one of the twins, Madeline's younger sibling, perhaps to enforce the mothers desire to bond with her children after losing one, protecting them from an incident to happen again. The use of a direct long shot allows the audience to view the child and the mother, also allowing the audience to assume an age for the child, showing how precious it is. The image shows the two on a slide, perhaps in a park signifying childhood, something that was taken away from Madeline as she was abducted from her parents. The image in the second case study shows one of Shannon Matthews' mother and one of Shannon Matthews herself. The two close ups appear to show similarities between the mother and daughter as well as displaying their emotions. This may be to shock the audience as the case study mentions the arrest of Shannon's mother for staging Shannon's abduction with the possibility of receiving money. The shock to the audience would be how a mother could be so cruel as to take advantage of her child for the sake of wealth. 

• Hall notes that representation is “contested”, in particular the representation of those with less power in society.  He argues that news coverage can be hierarchical.  To what extent is this evident from the two readings? Make reference to Hall’s theory of representation in your answer. (10 marks)

Looking at the two case studies, it is clear that those with different levels of power in society are represented differently in the media.

Newspaper Front Page

Write For The Guardian

Anonymous student leaking private information across college

Newspaper Template

News Values Essay

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/13/george-hw-bush-allegedly-touched-16-year-old-woman-inappropriately

The Guardian have published a news story that focuses a former president of the United States, George W. Bush sexually harassing a sixteen year old woman. This news story has a link to the news values summarised by Galtung and Ruge

A news value that the news story is linked to is frequency: the amount of coverage on that news story. Since the news story is fairly new the story isn't recurring on websites, newspapers or on television. There is however still a likelihood that The Guardian will revisit this news story or something linked to it, perhaps as an update. Another news value connected to The Guardian's news story is Threshold: the amount of coverage the story is receiving. The news story was not only covered by The Guardian but also The New York Post, Daily Mail and USA Today, exemplifying how much the western world prioritises western news even if it may not seem very important when compared to situations and events happening in the 'East'. Since the news story covers events happening to a former president the proximity is in the United States, a western country which is also the primary target audience for this news story. The news story is very pessimistic, viewing George W. Bush in a negative fashion which can be damaging to his reputation but is what can intrigue the audience. The technique of negativity is used to try and draw in the target audience. With the news consistently reporting on politicians and government related news, a news story on the former president can seem quite predictable, even though the news story may lack importance compared to other potential stories. There has not been much continuity on the news story for a few reasons being its relevance, importance or the audience's lack of interest. Although the heading of the news story makes it seem like the incident is quite recent, the article later reveals that this is information on events that had happened over a decade ago. Perhaps this misleading has led to the audience disapproving of continuity  due to their irritation of the original article. Since this news article was found online its composition differs from a physical newspaper composition. The article has its own page which consists of a heading at the top, followed by an image beneath it, after which comes the article itself with advertisement and links to social media on both sides. The personalisation of the article is simple and professional as most articles on The Guardian tend to be. Theme colours that identify the newspaper institution are also included on the online page which is a dark blue colour.

The article itself seems to hold little importance in current day society however The Guardian's odd choice to publish it nevertheless supports the ideology which the media industry is influenced by being otherness. Otherness in the news industry subjugates the importance of events happening in 'eastern countries' in favour of a story that 'hits close to home'; a story that the audience can relate to or empathise with as it is within a society or culture that they feel familiar with. To exemplify this, many terror attacks occur in third world or war-torn countries however it is very unlikely that the incident would make it to the front page of the news or be first news story online or on television however if that same terror attack were to happen in a first world country, a country where the society mirrors our own, (a western country) the incident would inevitably be broadcasted and published globally with constant updates and support from much of the audience with a great sense of sympathy and remorse. This form of otherness shows how ignorant society can be and how the media is able benefit from it by exposing their fears making them more ignorant by prioritising these first world countries, placing them in a loop with the media industry.

The news industry are what the audience rely on as a source of information however when the news cherry pick their potential news stories in favour of ones that they can potentially profit from rather than share news stories may actually be of use it defeats the concept of newspapers. Although that summary is an overgeneralization of newspapers as not all institutions may follow the same ideology.

Pros & Cons

Hire more journalists to cover a bigger range of events

Pros: 

- More news coverage

- Diverse content

Cons:

- Can be costly to hire more journalists.

Put more sponsored content online and in your newspapers

Pros:

- Sponsors pay institutions well to advertise their products.

Cons:

- Audiences can now easily avoid or ignore adverts from sponsors.

Sack Journalists 

Pros:

- No longer a need to pay the journalists so institution saves money

Cons:

- Less journalists to cover news stories or write articles.


Make journalists tweet more
Pros:
- Keeps the audience up to date
- Much more interactive
Cons:
- Can decrease the quality of blogs and articles that the journalists are working on.
- The tweets will eventually decrease in quality, also decreasing the audiences interest.


Increase cost of paper
Pros:
- Newspaper will generate higher revenue
Cons:
- Less sales will be made


Put up 'paywall'
Pros:
- Audience may pay for access to articles
Cons:
- Audience will look somewhere else for the article.


Ask readers to write more stories
Pros:
- Participation from audience into producing content
Cons:
- The audience will not read something that they have produced as they know what the article is about
- The audience may not be willing to do the journalists' jobs without payment


Shut down your paper (go online only)
Pros:
- Saves the newspaper money as they no longer have to invest in large amounts of print
Cons:
- There is still a sizable target audience who read physical newspapers. Shutting down the paper is a loss for the institution as they have lost a chunk of their audience.


Decrease price of newspaper (make it free)
Pros:
- May increase the audience quantity
Cons:
- Decrease in revenue from newspaper sales