Explain how the political context in which newspapers are produced, influences their ownership and regulation.

Explain the political significance of the concept of 'press freedom' and its relationship to representative democracy. Why do you think freedom of the press is important? How much influence do you think the government should have about the things reported in the UK press? (1)

The use of free press has both positives and negatives, and therefore shouldn't be totally self-regulated. The invasion of privacy of those in the public eye is becoming more common, with reporters taking stories too far and gaining private information. This is happening due to the demand the readers give, responding well to stories that seem exclusive. However, I feel that when  scoop is no longer in the public interest then it shouldn't be printed and hence should be regulated, as reporters are gaining both unwanted information and information which is too invasive. The concept of 'press freedom' has political significance as newspaper are able to support any political ideology, printing stories backing this ideology. Due to this, even though the government has little control of the press, politics remains one of the most covered topics. This relationship between 'press freedom' and it's political significance helps to represent the democratic society in Britain; allowing readers to chose which ideology, and therefore newspaper, they follow and buy, without any regulation against them. Just as everyone is entitled to an opinion when voting for the future of the country, with the majority gaining power. Also the government should oversee what is covered within the press, though it should not be able to control; what can and can not be published. The press should be covering stories and events with the public interest as a priority. 

How are newspapers regulated and why do you think this is necessary? Can you refer to an academic idea we have studied in class? (2)

The main organisations that regulate newspapers consist of: Editor's code of practice, Press Complaints Commission (PCC), and the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). This is necessary so that newspaper companies are protected by these organisations so that stories are checked to make sure there is no obligation to those stories which could harm the company involved if there was a problem with story coverage. Curran and Seaton argue that ownership and regulation is the most significant factors in how the media operates. This contributes to the media not having a broad range of opinions and perspectives as companies such as News UK own multiple news outlets which leads to the same opinion coming from the same person being put out into the media, this comes from a capitalist structure, newspapers such as the guardian are ran by trust boards and not by one person so their news comes form a wider perspective and has less bias. 

What examples of editorialised content would not fit 'impartial' television news (e.g. social or political opinion) from The Guardian and The Daily Mail print or online editions.) (3)

Editorialised content means that its not advertising based in the act that they pursue direct sales intentions. This is the reason in which customers purchase or subscribe to these news outlets. News outlets of this type manipulate and distorts news values in order to broadcast impartial judgements of peoples beliefs and what they want to hear. 

What examples of ownership models, e.g. The Guardian’s trust ownership and The Daily Mail’s proprietor model, could show the opportunities offered by the latter model for control by ‘press barons’. (4)

Ownership models like the Daily Mail's proprietor model offer a prime example of how media can be controlled to influence public political views. Press barons like Rupert Murdoch, who controls most of the UK tabloids, can be seen to share his political opinions in each of his newspapers; thus allows for an unfair opinion to be shared with the UK.

How much power does the press have to shape political debate, e.g. the influence of proprietors on politicians to support policies promoting cross-media ownership or holding back from regulation. (5)

The press can develop power through ownership of newspapers which consequently can shape political stances due to their ideologues and therefore political debate through the widespread circulation which has the power to influence politicians in their debates. The owners of newspapers can influence the editorial stance of a newspaper. Newspapers will also attempt to influence how the public vote in elections. It is important that newspapers stick to a code of conduct or rules set out by independent organisations in order to avoid this. If one large business or one singular man owns a company their ideologies can filter down into the papers. This relates to Hesmondhalgh's theory on cultural industries as DMGT (owner of the Daily Mail) also owns multiple other companies. This therefore shows the integration and conglomeration of cultural industries which follows the normal capitalist patterns seen in Hesmondhalgh's theory. 


Explain the political affiliations of the two newspapers, e.g. The Daily Mail as a right wing newspaper is partly defined by its support for the Conservative party, The Guardian as a centre-left newspaper is partly defined by its support for Labour or the Liberal Democrats, and how this is clear from an example you have studied. (6)

To begin with, the Daily Mail is a clear right wing (capitalist) newspaper, which evidently portrays these views through its stories and layout. The Daily Mail tends to have a great focus on money and prices in modern life - even when not especially relevant to the story. The Mail does this because of its political affiliation, due to the wealthy being interested in the price of things. Another point, is that the Mail favours right wing people and the wealthy, which is clearly shown in their bias to some stories. An example of this, was the paradise papers coverage, which involved the queen being under fire for not paying tax and also for the elites dodging tax. In this, the Mail back up the queen and made it as if those lesser off were wrong, and the queen was simply a victim. 

In contrast to the Mail, we see the Guardian adopts left wing (socialist) ideologies because of its support for labour. The Guardian is very much a hard news paper, and so what it conveys tends to be less biased and more factual. Despite this though, there is a slight lean in what it has written towards the socialist side of things, and so the rich tend to look worse. Interestingly, the Guardian also says a lot about tax at the minute, though what it says is how the rich should really help the poor, and so they should be taxed a greater amount. 

Analysing Shelter's Advertisements

In this advertisement poster, the advertisers have chosen the colours black and red, to portray their campaign. The colour red connotates with blood, danger, action. It symbolises action and is linked to anger. Red is a very emotionally intense colour, it has very high visibility, so it is good at catching people's attention. The colour red, brings text and images to the foreground, meaning that it will be the first thing that an observer will look at. The colour black connotates with fear, grief, aggression and mystery. Black is a good contrasting colour, as it contrasts with any colour. When combined with red, which is a powerful colour, it also gives a very aggressive colour scheme. The advertisers might have used the colour black to show the seriousness of the campaign. The reader can also see how serious the campaign is by the facial expressions of the actors. The colour white is also used, the colour white makes people feel safe, so the advertisers are trying to show that if people donate money to the charity, then those people will be helping others feel safe. Each poster shows a different challenge that can affect the security of people's homes when personal situations change, such as losing a job and the impact of paying off debts. The poster is urging people to seek help early, because a lot of things can happen that will affect them badly. 

Media Representation: Unseen Advertisement

Shelter vs Amnesty International 



One similarity is that both posters are charities and they are trying to warn people and they are trying to help people. Another similarity is that they both use he colour red. Red is the colour of blood and it is associated with rage, danger and wrath. It is an intense colour that is packed with emotions such as anger and violence. The amnesty international poster uses barb wire to show that there is a lot of war and conflict in the world, that people feel imprisoned or are imprisoned. Amnesty is trying to stop this by showing that if people donate money then they can stop the cruelty and violence, hence why there is barb wire and a hand which is trying to cut it. One difference is that, the Shelter poster's purpose is to help those people who have lost their homes to find shelter quickly. Whereas the amnesty international poster's purpose is to stop cruelty and violence in the world.

Old Spice Analysis

The poster itself is directed to men, because it says " smell like a man, man". Even though the product is for men, the video campaign itself is directed to women. It is shown that 70% of women purchase men toiletries, instead of women toiletries. The product is shown as an oyster that has two tickets inside it, then it turns into diamonds, then it shows the actual product. It says that anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice instead of a lady. Which suggests that the campaign is trying to make women buy the product for themselves, instead of buying it for men. The campaign shows an attractive man, telling the female audience that if they purchase the product, their man would be able to smell like him 

Analysing Lucozade's Advertisement

They have put a blue background because the colour of the drink is blue. Also when people think of the colour blue, they think about the sky, water and stability. Water represents that the drink is refreshing and that it will keep you hydrated and help maintain endurance performance. The background shows two shades of blues, there is a light blue, which connotes with health and a dark blue which connotes with power. The advertisers show that the drink does not only keep you hydrated, but its good for your health and it gives you a lot of power. The yellow in the poster represents the energy that generates in your muscles when you have a drink of lucozade. The yellow is very effective for attracting attention, that is why it is used to highlight the most important elements of the poster. The yellow on the poster is associated with freshness, to show that the drink is fresh. The dark navy blue that is used for the font, connotes with power and seriousness. 
The background of the poster goes from dark to light, then you can see that there is light on most part of Gareth Bale's face but then there is not that much light on the right side of his face. 
'In a different league'→ this might mean something about football, because Gareth Bale is a well known footballer. So it can be taking about the Premier League or the Championship League. So the advertisers may suggesting that if you drink the lucozade drink then you will be in some type of special league. 

The Paradise Papers Story coverage

Case study: News story coverage→The Paradise Papers...

More than 13 million leaked secret corporate files, about half of which belong to offshore law and corporate services provider Appleby, which has ten offices around the globe. There are also documents from corporate registries in 19 tax havens. These are mostly Caribbean and Atlantic islands such as Bermuda, Grenada and the Bahamas, but also include Malta, Lebanon, Labuan (an island territory in Malaysia), Samoa, Vanuatu, the Cook Island and the Marshall Island.

The German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung obtained the files and shared them with 95 other media organisations around the world. But the German newspaper is not going to share the information about the source that gave them the files, as it is against the editorial code to share information about your sources. 

The files involve taxes about multinational countries, wealthy individuals, heads of state, politicians ad sports star from around the world, including many from the UK.

On Monday 6th November, the main headlines covered leaked documents revealing the financial details of the super-rich. It outlined how many were allowed to keep money outside of the UK in order to avoid paying tax.

The Guardian- political, economical, formal language, left-wing, passive news, socialist ideology, the newspaper is challenging the Queen's morals→ Berliner broadsheet→information seekers→masthead→splash→copy- formal mode of address

News Value→ SOCIALIST, POLITICAL, ECONOMICAL, FORMAL LANGUAGE 
                              ↔ANALYSING
Ideology→ SOCIALIST →PRO-CAPITALIST→MAINSTREAMED 

 The Guardian spent a number of days publishing a series of articles focusing on this 'Paradise Papers' story. The yellow colour linked all these front covers together. → this may have been done to make it shocking to the audience, because it gives more weight to the story.
Free press→freedom of speech- news given from a source. They can publish what they want because they own the newspaper.
PUBLIC INTEREST? ACCOUNT MORALISTIC                    

The Guardian- The use of negative language is important→ 'controversial'→ 'exploiting'- making the poor look stupid and worthless. This newspaper is being critical about the Queen. This newspaper is also making the Queen look like as if she took advantage of the people in Britain. The Queen is supposed to help people in Britain, but the newspaper suggests that she is taking money from the people who do not have it (exploiting). Not everyone in Britain is going to agree with what the Queen has done (controversial). The newspaper is also challenging the Queens morals.
Uses and gratifications→ the Guardian's audience is mostly upper/middle class readers. They might start questioning what the Queen has being doing.
The guardian uses entertainment through gaining information. For the people who are reading the newspaper, it suggests that the readers find the information entertaining
The yellow signifies something urgent→ such as big news. Bright, pure yellow is an attention getter, it is seen more quick than other colours, the colour yellow is spontaneous and unstable colour, because it is eye catching.

Socialist point of view→ the view of what the Queen did is bad→ the  newspaper uses a range of negative language. "exploiting"→"controversial"
The newspaper is challenging how the rich have ways of not paying their taxes, even though they have a lot of money, this make the rich look bad because of their actions. Rich = 'accused'. 

The Daily Mail- 'dragged'→ defending the Queen→right wing ideology→making the Queen come out as a victim. The daily mail are defending the Queen and making her look innocent to the public which is because they are a right wing paper, so the target audience is people who are right wing. 

The audience are interested in 'soft news' so they are interested in celebrities. The newspaper is all linked to economics e.g. school girl worth '£5m' and Queen dragged into '£10m' tax scandal. The 13 year old actress on the front cover, is represented as a pretty young girl that is clearly popular as she is on the red carpet. Even though she is the youngest female on the page, she is represented as confident and independent.

 The Queen is represented as vulnerable, this is suggested by the verb 'dragged' which suggests that one has no choice in the matter. This follows the stereotype of a woman who is typically represented as timid/vulnerable and weak. 

The model follows the Male Gaze Theory as she is presented as if she is taking her clothes off, with lots of skin on show, she is representing herself as a sexual object. Looking over her shoulder with a seductive expression. 

Media Language→ celebrity as main image, masthead-'newspaper of the year', minimal amount of splash, right wing ideology- headline, tabloid conventions, football pullout, section on pullout. The newspaper uses bright colours to draw people's attention.

Daily Mirror- left- winged tabloid→'scandal'→ making the Queen look critical. 

Daily Telegraph- objectivity (no ideology) → being old-fashioned about the way they way they write their newspapers. 

Independent- the main headline just tells us facts about the Paradise Papers, there is no ideology that is being used and is the newspaper headline is being objective.

Online News→ elements of how to share the story→ comments that people have written about the story, positive/negative? → the online newspapers will get people interacting and responding about the news story. This is good for the newspapers, as they will be getting a wide range of audience.


The rich should not be held to account for, because the government let what the rich did happen. They did not let people in Britain store money there, so the only thing the rich could do was keep in other countries.

Social Participatory Media

The Guardian- followers- 6.92M  tweets- 395k
Daily Mail- followers- 2.15M  tweets- 222k

The reason why the Guardian has more followers that the Daily Mail is because, it has more than 30 separate channels for different segments, such as sports and politics.  

Ownership and Regulations

WHO OWNS WHAT?

How many organisations own national newspapers and do any companies own more than one title?

•  There are 7 organisations that own national newspapers, 6 of the companies own more than one title. The titles that each company owns are all linked together, for example, Daily Mail and General Trust, own the Mail and Mail on Sunday. 

Which companies own regional newspapers? 

• The company that owns regional newspapers, such as, the Leicester Mercury, is the Trinity Mirror plc. The Trinity Mirror plc is the largest British newspaper, magazine and digital publisher, after purchasing rival Local World for £220 million, in October 2015. It publishes 240 regional papers, as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record.

Ownership

The mail was originally a broadsheet, but it was then switched to a compact formal, in 1971. The paper has a circulation of around two million, which is the fourth largest circulation of any English language daily newspaper in the world. The Daily Mail, devised by Alfred Harmsworth (later Viscount Northcliffe) and his brother Harold (later Viscount Rothermere), was published on 4 May 1896. It was an immediate success. It was a cost halfpenny at a time when London dailies cost one penny, and was more populist in tone and more concise in its coverage than its rivals. The planned issue was 100,000 copies but the print run on the first day was 397,215 and additional printing facilities had to be acquired to sustain a circulation which rose to 500,000 in 1899. 



The Guardian, which was originally published as the Manchester Guardian, was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle, a group of non-conformist businessmen. They launched their paper after the police closure of the one radicalManchester Observer, a paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group (GMG) of newspapers, radio stations and print media including; The Observer Sunday newspaper, the Guardian Weekly international newspaper, and new media—Guardian Abroad website, and guardian.co.uk. All aforementioned were owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation existing between 1936 and 2008, which aimed to ensure the paper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it did not become vulnerable to take overs by for-profit media groups. At the beginning of October 2008, the Scott Trust's assets were transferred to a new limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, with the intention being that the original trust would be wound up. Dame Liz Forgan,  chair of the Scott Trust, reassured staff that the purposes of the new company remained the same as under the previous arrangements. 



The Sun is a tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Since The Sun on Sunday was launched in February 2012, the paper has been a seven-day operation. As a broadcast, it was founded in 1964 as a successor to the Daily Herald; it became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owners. It was published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The Sun has the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, but in late 2013 slipped to second largest Saturday newspaper behind the Daily Mail. It had an average daily circulation of 2.2 million copies in March 2014. 

The Independent is a British online newspaper. Established in 1986 as an independent national morning newspaper published in London, it was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Independent News and Media from 1997 until it was sold to Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev in 2010. The last printed edition of The Independent was published Saturday 20 March 2016, leaving only its digital editions. Nicknamed the Indy. it began as a broadsheet, but changed to tabloid (compact) format in 2003. Until September 2011, the paper described itself on the banner at the top of every newspaper as "free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influences". It tends to take a pro-market stance on economic issues.

The impact of technological change on newspapers

Look at all of the UK news titles and research how the paywall is being used in an attempt to protect revenue and profits for these companies.

• All the online newspapers add a lot of different articles for people to read. They add things such as celebrities, sport and politics. They also add a range of images so that the readers are more drawn to the articles. By them having these articles online, they would make people want to buy the printed version as well. 

How do newspapers prompt readers to interact with their online news? Consider how they use social media to encourage reader participation.

• The media can influence people to read the newspaper online, such as on Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook. They do this by putting headlines that will catch people's eyes. With Facebook, people can share newspapers articles, so that all of the people that follow them can see it, and then some of those people might be intrigued with the article. 

Consider how you could apply Shirky's End of Audience Theories to online news products. 

• The content that is put into the news articles on the online news, can have an emotional connection to the reader. The news provide a platform for people to provide value for the readers. 

Media Language and Representation: Intertextuality- Big Issue Essay

Intertextuality- the shaping of a text's meaning by another text- literacy device that creates an 'interrelationship between texts' and generates related understanding in separate works. These references are made to influence the reader and add layers of depth to a text, based on the readers prior knowledge and understanding. 



The Big Issue uses references from a Swedish pop group called Abba from the 70s. They have the bodies of the members of Abba with the faces of Nicolas Sturgeon, David Cameron, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, who are well known members of Parliament. They included speech bubbles near the Parliament members' faces, which are lyrics of a song by Abba which is called 'Knowing me, Knowing You'. The Big Issue also added bold text, which says 'THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL', which is a song by the Swedish group Abba.
Nicolas Sturgeon- 'Breaking up is never easy, I know'.
David Cameron- 'Knowing me, knowing EU'- The Big Issue decided to make a pun about Brexit by adding 'EU', instead of 'You'.
Boris Johnson- 'This time we're through'.
Nigel Farage- 'Take a chan-chance'.

Comparing Editorial Comments

Similarities:

• small masthead
• column style- text based (no images)
• authoritative, persuasive tone 
• subheading = outlines opinion 
• based on current affairs 
• 2-3 different comment articles 

Differences:

• vocabulary range 
• Daily Mail audience- less intelligent people/ The Guardian audience- intelligent people
• Daily Mail- easy to read and easy to understand/ The Guardian- hard to read and difficult to understand what the writer is trying to inform the reader. 
• The Daily Mail- easy to persuade the reader/ The Guardian- might be hard to persuade the reader 
• Formal and opinionated

                         

Uses and Gratification theory- a popular approach to understanding mass communication. Audiences choose what type of media they would like to consume, which shows that they are active. Audiences are responsible for choosing media to meet their needs.

• Basic model- identify- being able to recognise the product or person in front of you, tole models that reflect similar values to yours. 
• Educate- being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding. 
• Entertain- what you are consuming should give you enjoyment.