News


News is how it is present and is not always the truth. News outlets have rules that need to be followed about what is published so Twitter allows freedom of speech without guidelines. News reporters are held accountable for wrong information with lots of checks for all newspapers even The Sun. This can make it a more reliable source than social media which doesn't get fact checks. Stereotypes can be used by the news to force specific opinions and to associate certain feelings and opinions with groups. This allows them to create a more black and white sense of morality when it comes to groups of people they like or dislike. For example while soldiers are presented as heroes, people on benefits are presented as scroungers. This enforces an us vs them dynamic with groups like immigrants who are constantly antagonised by newspapers like The Sun. Risk is a big part of business which is why companies make repetitive but safe choices when producing media, the Daily Mail publishes 2000 articles a day and while most of them won't be a success they will have enough hits to make enough money. This is why news companies repeat stories about topics like Meghan Markle and migrants. Some news is big enough that it bypasses genre and political leaning like Queen Elizabeth 2nd dying.

47.5 million adults in the UK are reached by newspapers everyday which is more than google. Newspapers are worth an estimated £5 billion 2025. Newspapers are valuable for advertisers as it takes so long to read therefore there can be more adverts squeezed in. 3 publishers own 83% of the news in the UK.

Doom scrolling- endlessly scrolling through bad news

Facts/statistics

  • Guardian only became profitable in 2019
  • The Guardian only prints for prestige with its last known circulation being 100,000, stopped printing because of how bad sales were
  • Daily Mail has circulation of 908,000
  • 39 million views on Guardian website with 36 million on the Daily Mail
  • 3 publishers own 83% of the news industry making it an oligopoly(owned by News Corp, DMG Media and Reach PLC)
  • The Guardian owns 10% of the news industry
  • 60% of the news industry is owned by 2 media barons Viscount Rothermere and Rupert Murdoch
  • Daily Mail publishes 2000 articles a day with 4000 images
  • 17% of Daily Mail readers vote labour
  • 70% of Guardian readers vote labour
  • Mail Online article about Boris Johnson’s final days got 1000 comments in the first hour of being posted
  • 14.3 million people read a newspaper every day
  • UK is the country with the 24th highest press freedom with North Korea at 180th
  • Daily Mirror sales have plummeted 3 million from 1960 to 2015
  • 14.3 million people read a paper every day
  • 81% of newspaper's revenue comes from circulation
  • Time it takes to consume news:Newspapers=1 hour 9 minutes, tablet/phone=50 minutes and Sunday news=1 hour 27 minutes

News institutions have 3 areas of activity

production: how the product is made
distribution/exchange: multi-platform means news is distributed in many different forms
marketing: a way to tell people about your newspapers

60% of newspapers are owned by two men: Rupert Murdoch and Viscount Rothermere 

Ownership types

  1. Media barons-wealthy individuals who own a paper or a group of papers like Rupert Murdoch
  2. Cross media conglomerates- huge global institutions who own numerous media outlets, may be owned by individuals or groups
  3. Trusts-when money is given to the owners, but they do not get control of what is published which is instead given to editors.

Levels of attention

Primary level of attention: focused on media text and nothing else
Secondary level of attention: doing something else while consuming the media text
Tertiary level of attention: media text is on in the background while something else takes your main attention

Newspaper genres

Tabloid

  • Eye grabbing and sensationalised headlines and covers
  • Informal and colloquial language
  • Less text
  • Soft news with more celebrity gossip
  • Wordplay and puns
  • Cheaper
  • Less serious news or stories told in a less serious manner 
  • Bigger ads targeting a lower income demographic 
  • C2DE audience usually

Broadsheet

  • Formal
  • More text
  • Hard news
  • Lots of text
  • Statistics
  • Higher quality journalism
  • More luxurious products for a higher income audience
  • ABC1 audience commonly 
  • More expensive
  • Larger blocks of texts

Mid Market tabloids

Mid market tabloids are a mix between tabloids and broadsheets that borrow features from both. Broadsheets have also started using smaller papers like tabloids to make it more convenient. They have also started using sensationalist language and sometimes covering soft news to sell papers better. This is part of a wider movement of tabloidisation where more newspapers are taking features from tabloids to increase sales. this works with tabloids taking broadsheet conventions to create dual convergence 

News UK

Owns: The Sun and The Times
Weekly circulation: 13 million
Market share:36%
Cumulative share:36%

DMG Media

Owns: Daily mail
Weekly circulation: 8 million
Market share: 24%
Cumulative share: 60%

Reach PLC

Owns: Daily Mirror and Daily Express
Weekly circulation: 8 million
Market share: 23%
Cumulative share: 83%

Scott Trust

Owns: The Guardian
Weekly circulation: 1,063,176
Market share: 3.01%
Cumulative share: 97.2%

80% of the news is owned by 3 companies: News UK, DMG Media, Reach PLC

Donations

Embedded videos are useful like in videos on YouTube. Guardian uses donations the best, but it usually doesn't work the best. It only plugs 25% of sales lost from print ads. 

Paywalls

Make audiences pay for access to digital content. Didn't work for The Sun and gave up in 2015. Audiences can't access content for free. Only work if content is premium. Guardian and Financial Times worked because of the quality of journalism.

Technological convergence

Merging multiple forms of distinct media technologies for the same product. This means the news can now include:
  • text
  • pictures
  • feedback opportunity
  • video
  • audio
  • links to related content

Competition

  • search engines mean people don't have to search for specific news sites for news
  • social media means anyone can post the news to sites, usually Twitter
  • online n=ews threaten print news as it is far easier to access
  • citizen journalism means people can report news themselves
  • aggregator curators like NewsNow, Huffington Post(partly), Buzzfeed and Upworthy (aggregators don't produce the news themselves but just repackage and sell it)
  • word of mouth from other people
  • apps of news
  • BBC website

Statistics

The UK is 24th on the ranking of countries with the most press freedom and North Korea is 180th (last).
73% of The Guardian readers vote labour
79% of Telegraph readers vote conservative
17% of mail readers voted labour which suggests the power of soft news
35% online time spent reading news and 65% print
Monthly reach of their newspapers and their website top 3
  1. Daily Mail
  2. The Sun
  3. The Guardian
Daily Mirror circulation has plummeted hard and has been down 3 million from the 1960s to 2015
The Daily Mail publishes 2000 articles and 4000 images every day 

The Fourth Estate

The people and organisations that report on them have great influence and the press is stated as being the fourth estate of a democracy. 

Press freedom

Leveson Inquiry

The News Of The World was the UK best selling newspaper and was owned by Rupert Murdoch (owner of The Sun) that hacked the phone and even deleted texts of a teenage murder victims phone (Milly Downer) after years of hacking celebrities like Hugh Grant and royal family members. This further revealed that they'd hacked the phones of soldiers and bombing victims. Andy Colter who was an editor of The News Of The World and was hired by the prime minister James Cameron. The entire news industry shifted because of this and News Of The World folded and payed millions to victims before shutting down with the final cover of "thank you & goodbye". This started the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 to investigate the ethics and practices of the press. Leveson suggested that there should be a state backed regulator to hold the press accountable.
Final NOTW cover.jpeg

Regulation

Regulation is the restriction of the media by a group of people. Regulators are reactionary and will only be looked at after it has been complained about and therefore consumed. A lack of regulation can be detrimental to a democracy. Films have a slower release cycle and therefore have more regulation. Ofcom is the TV regulator and Love Island gets 3600 complaints a week and they don't do anything. There are two news regulators in the UK.

IPSO (Independent, Press, Standards, Organisation)

Newspapers pay for IPSO as it is not state backed. Their rules are vague enough to not have to properly follow them. 1500 print titles are signed up and 1100 websites. The Guardian significantly have opted out and are instead self regulated. The chair of IPSO is a politician called Lord Faulks which undermines the Fourth Estate.  5000 complaints have been made in IPSO's history but none of them have been acted on. IPSO has made promises to change but haven't. 
IPSO members include:
  • The Telegraph
  • Daily Mail
  • Metro
  • The Times
  • The Sun
  • Daily Express
  • Daily Mirror
  • Daily Star

Impress (Independent Monitor for the press)

Complies to Leveson and an independent funding system meaning it isn't compromised or biased although the leader of Impress (Max Mosley) is the son of a fascist leader (Oswald Mosley) and in 2008 sued News Of The World for invasion of privacy when they reported on a supposed 5 hour Nazi orgy with a group of prostitutes.



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