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

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

1. 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?

The freedom of the press is important as it creates news stories that can be published without major problems with what coverage or content it includes; although, the government should have a limited control over this as some stories published by the press can be offensive or personal to people, therefore may result to legal action, so newspaper freedom of the press should be monitored and carefully covered so that the company does not get into trouble like the News of The World. It would benefit the public if the press was controlled to an extent but are still allowed to post whatever content coverage is suitable for each paper to help create a wider target audience for the company. It is also ensured that the government have a slight influence on this freedom as the need for regulation needs to be at a minimum so that rich upper classes can be stopped from owning too much power over the other classes.

2. 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.

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.

3. 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’.

Editorialised content means that its not advertising based in the act that they pursue direct sales intensions. 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 judgments of peoples beliefs and what they want to hear.

4. 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.

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 UK tabloids, can be seen to share his political opinions in each of his newspapers; this allows for an unfair opinion to be shared with the UK. 

5. 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.

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 as shown above. This therefore shows the integration and conglomeration of cultural industries which follows the normal capitalist patterns seen in Hesmondhalgh's theory.

6. 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.

To begin with, the daily mail is a clear right wing(capitalist) newspaper, which evidently portrays these views through its conservative stories and layout.The daily mail always tends to have a 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 taxes 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 the left wing (socialist) ideologies because of its support for labour . The guardian is very much a hard newspaper 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 rich rich should really help the poor and so they should be taxed a greater amount.