Timed Essay 5
Explain how political contexts influence individual producers within the newspaper industry. Refer to 'The Guardian' and 'The Daily Mail' to support your answer.
In this essay, I will be referring to 'The Daily Mail' and 'The Guardian' newspapers in order to explain how political contexts influence individual producers, and therefore audiences, within the newspaper industry.
Curran and Seaton’s Power in the Media theory is highly applicable to the idea that political contexts influence individual producers, as it highlights the power of newspaper owners. The theory suggests that monopolies dominate the newspaper scene, using propaganda to project a limited range of ideas and messages to large audiences, influencing their values and beliefs. These messages will stem from the newspaper owner’s personal ideology, which is influenced by social, economic, and political contexts. David Gauntlett’s identity theory explores how each newspaper producer will have their own complicated, individual identity, influenced by their class, age, gender, upbringing, and media consumption. Identity is constantly evolving throughout time, changing how individuals view the world. These newspaper producers will also exist in wider, generalised social groups, particularly a social group that aligns with their political positioning – so producers with a mainstream right-wing ideology will identify as a conservative. In 2017, YouGov conducted a survey on the political positioning of popular British newspapers. Five of the eight newspapers were considered primarily right-wing, with ‘The Daily Mail’ achieving the most right-wing spot, demonstrating the large conservative representation in the British media. The owners of these newspapers will use their products as vehicles to promote their ideologies, abusing their power as they can be influential without being directly responsible. These owners, such as Rupert Murdoch (the owner of right-wing newspapers such as ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Times’), are often white, male, and middle class, and will usually promote western, conservative ideologies.
This conservative, western ideology is often hostile towards marginalised social groups, representing them in a negative light. For example, ‘The Daily Mail’ represents homosexuality in a negative manner, enforcing the heterosexual, white, conservative ideology. The headline of the story claims “Gagging of mother forced to hand baby to gay dad”, suggesting that the father threatened the mother. This makes a false representation of the father, suggesting that his sexuality has an interference with his role as a parent. Repeated exposure to this political standpoint in the media over a long period of time will cultivate this view in the newspaper’s audience, influencing their beliefs, values, attitudes, and perceptions of reality. This will cause an audience to actively seek out texts that reinforce their viewpoints, which is proven in the statistics above, as a large percentage of the British media is right wing to support this dominant conservative ideology. The audience of ‘The Daily Mail’ is typically white, middle aged, and middle class; whilst they do reach an ABC1 audience, most of their readership is a C2DE demographic.
Newspapers such as ‘The Guardian’ oppose this conservative view, instead promoting a liberal, humanitarian ideology in their newspapers. These differing views set up a sense of binary opposition in the British media, which resulted in the right-wing newspapers branding the left-wing as the “loony left”. Regarding Stuart Hall’s reception theory, a right-wing audience is likely to accept this message, taking a preferred reading of the text, whilst a left-wing audience is more likely to have an oppositional reading. ‘The Guardian’s audience has an ABC1 demographic. Liberal newspapers such as ‘The Guardian’ will focus on human impact in their news stories, whilst ‘The Daily Mail’ tends to focus on how it will affect Britain and the working-to-middle class. For example, ‘The Guardian’ released an article on Calais, using a MCU of a crying young girl, who was clearly harmed, as the focus of their report, directing their humanitarian audience to consider how these actions will affect humanity. On the other hand, ‘The Daily Mail’ presents the situation as an issue for the British, writing “You pay £36m for Calais clearout”.
Overall, political contexts will shape an individual producer’s ideologies, influencing their viewpoint on news stories, which is then translated in the production of their newspapers.
In this essay, I will be referring to 'The Daily Mail' and 'The Guardian' newspapers in order to explain how political contexts influence individual producers, and therefore audiences, within the newspaper industry.
Curran and Seaton’s Power in the Media theory is highly applicable to the idea that political contexts influence individual producers, as it highlights the power of newspaper owners. The theory suggests that monopolies dominate the newspaper scene, using propaganda to project a limited range of ideas and messages to large audiences, influencing their values and beliefs. These messages will stem from the newspaper owner’s personal ideology, which is influenced by social, economic, and political contexts. David Gauntlett’s identity theory explores how each newspaper producer will have their own complicated, individual identity, influenced by their class, age, gender, upbringing, and media consumption. Identity is constantly evolving throughout time, changing how individuals view the world. These newspaper producers will also exist in wider, generalised social groups, particularly a social group that aligns with their political positioning – so producers with a mainstream right-wing ideology will identify as a conservative. In 2017, YouGov conducted a survey on the political positioning of popular British newspapers. Five of the eight newspapers were considered primarily right-wing, with ‘The Daily Mail’ achieving the most right-wing spot, demonstrating the large conservative representation in the British media. The owners of these newspapers will use their products as vehicles to promote their ideologies, abusing their power as they can be influential without being directly responsible. These owners, such as Rupert Murdoch (the owner of right-wing newspapers such as ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Times’), are often white, male, and middle class, and will usually promote western, conservative ideologies.
This conservative, western ideology is often hostile towards marginalised social groups, representing them in a negative light. For example, ‘The Daily Mail’ represents homosexuality in a negative manner, enforcing the heterosexual, white, conservative ideology. The headline of the story claims “Gagging of mother forced to hand baby to gay dad”, suggesting that the father threatened the mother. This makes a false representation of the father, suggesting that his sexuality has an interference with his role as a parent. Repeated exposure to this political standpoint in the media over a long period of time will cultivate this view in the newspaper’s audience, influencing their beliefs, values, attitudes, and perceptions of reality. This will cause an audience to actively seek out texts that reinforce their viewpoints, which is proven in the statistics above, as a large percentage of the British media is right wing to support this dominant conservative ideology. The audience of ‘The Daily Mail’ is typically white, middle aged, and middle class; whilst they do reach an ABC1 audience, most of their readership is a C2DE demographic.
Newspapers such as ‘The Guardian’ oppose this conservative view, instead promoting a liberal, humanitarian ideology in their newspapers. These differing views set up a sense of binary opposition in the British media, which resulted in the right-wing newspapers branding the left-wing as the “loony left”. Regarding Stuart Hall’s reception theory, a right-wing audience is likely to accept this message, taking a preferred reading of the text, whilst a left-wing audience is more likely to have an oppositional reading. ‘The Guardian’s audience has an ABC1 demographic. Liberal newspapers such as ‘The Guardian’ will focus on human impact in their news stories, whilst ‘The Daily Mail’ tends to focus on how it will affect Britain and the working-to-middle class. For example, ‘The Guardian’ released an article on Calais, using a MCU of a crying young girl, who was clearly harmed, as the focus of their report, directing their humanitarian audience to consider how these actions will affect humanity. On the other hand, ‘The Daily Mail’ presents the situation as an issue for the British, writing “You pay £36m for Calais clearout”.
Overall, political contexts will shape an individual producer’s ideologies, influencing their viewpoint on news stories, which is then translated in the production of their newspapers.
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