The News Industry - Newspaper Front Cover

The News Industry - News Coverage Of Madeline McCann & Shannon Matthews

News Coverage of Social Class: Madeline McCann and Shannon Matthews

1. 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)

One of the examples that the article uses to describe the Madeline case is to show when and where the abduction had occurred. The quote "Near Pria da Luz where the family had been staying in a holiday apartment when Madeline was abducted 24 days ago", you can tell from this that the McCann's are quite wealthy that they can afford to stay in an apartment abroad. The place where they are staying is a quite lavish area where tourist usually go to stay, the Algarve is actually rich with interesting buildings and beautiful countryside that mainly middle-class people can go to. From reading this the viewers can detect that the McCann’s are middle/upper class people and people who are able to rent out an apartment in Portugal. I think the message is loud and clear that since the McCann’s went on holiday and lost their child in a different place that isn’t home gains a lot more sympathy towards the audience than how Shannon Matthews was lost around her home, which could be why there was a huge difference between the two stories. 

You can see how raw the article was towards Shannon’s cases, because of the information that they shared. The information what was shared was previous history on her mother’s life where its stated that “Miss Matthews, who has seven children to five fathers” this reveals how complex and long the case was, unlike Madeline’s case, they didn’t need to do any sort of background check of her family, which then again shows the norm of a ‘nuclear family’ that was a typical ‘happy family’.

Another way you can spot a difference of language on articles, is in the McCann’s family. You can see how caring and responsible she is as a mother towards her children. You can tell this from when she says, “You just don’t expect anything like that in a million years. We triple checked. We wanted to believe she was there. We had absolutely no doubt that’s she has been taken”, this shows how concerned and affectionate her mother is towards Madeline, because she made sure to triple check, and maybe because she’s such a good mother she and her partner never expected their child to be missing like this. The quotations that are used are quite personalise which connects towards the readers and creates sympathy for her mother. This also goes back to that ‘nuclear family’ where the mother takes very good care of her children and knows them thoroughly. It displays how a middle-class family is much more involved and cares a lot about their families unlike the working class. You can see in Matthews case that her mother is apposite to this to the point where her motherhood is accused for the wrong. “one of the friends allegedly claimed that Miss Matthews had known where Shannon was throughout the 24-day search”, just this reveals how irresponsible and is a deceiver Karen is because even her own friend is able to doubt on her and claim that Karen knew where she was. Karen’s character is questioned and doubted which you hardly see happening to a middle-class person go through but because Karen has a dysfunctional family and is a working-class woman she can easily be doubted on.

2. 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 daily telegraph has chosen to display an image of Madeline and Kate together. The image is a mid-shot where you can see the subjects body and what they’re doing. It could be that Kate may have taken her daughter to the park and there both on the slide together were she’s holding her hand helping her on the slide. This display her love and care towards Madeline as she’s holding on to her. This definitely shows the blissful moments that they once shared while they were together. Madeline is wearing a pink top which connotes a sense of girliness, delicacy and sweet personality just like any other girl. The way daily telegraph has chosen to exhibits this image shows how they sympathise with the whole story hence why they decided to post such a comforting image. You would expect this type of image from middle class typical childhood is often characterized by an authoritative parenting approach with a combination of parental warmth, support and control. Parents set some rules establishing limits, but overall this approach creates a greater sense of trust, security, and self-confidence. The middle-class parents' involvement in their children's lives underlines their recognition of its importance. So, when you see Madeline and Kate together you can realise the boundaries and rules they set, by letting her child enjoy and have fun at the park. 

However, if you see the images that daily telegraph has used in the Shannon Matthews article are completely different from the McCann’s. The images are close ups of Karen and Shannon where they aren’t together, and have separate images. You can see how Karen’s facial expression are quite dull and her face is tilted downwards and her eyes are facing the ground. She seems to look emotionless and nonchalant in the image. The image of Shannon seems like a portrait from her school, where you can tell from her expressions she looks quite happy just like any young girl would be. She’s also wearing pink top and a pink hair band which shows her girly personality just like any other normal girl. The individual images could reveal the real separation between them, after what Karen did to Shannon. 

People can expect a working-class mother to fake a kidnapping since working class people are more like to be financially unstable. Working-class wages can be very low which is hard to provide for a family let alone provide for seven children that Karen has. The mind-set of a working-class person is completely different from a middle-class person, a working-class person is mainly focused on trying to make ends meet and busy working most hours, hence why they don’t give much importance to their children like the middle-class people do. 

3. 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)

I agree with hall because news coverage is hierarchical as they prioritise and favour the rich and middle-class people more than the poor working-class people. Most news coverages about hierarchical stories are usually presented in a positive way, where newspapers display the stories in certain way which the audience has a preferred reading. And most less hierarchical stories are presented in a negative way, showing how deprived working-class people are. Those who have less power are certainly challenged much more than those who have power because they can compete against them as they don’t have security of such power. I think that those who have less power have to definitely struggle to prove them themselves as that they don’t fit in the stereotypical mould that society has created.

You can see this happening in Shannon Matthews story and Madeline McCann’s story because there are social differences between them since Madeline belongs to a middle-class family. Kate is represented as a typical caring mother who she unconditionally loves Madeline. She’s presented as a good mother who looks out for her children and is attentive towards them. However, Karen Matthews is represented as a ignorant and a negligent mother who allowed her daughter to captive and be in harm for money. She’s presented as a bad mother who did something like this to her own daughter, when she should be protecting her. And through language, expressions and signs we are able to tell how each story is being presented.

4. What is the dominant (intended) meaning of The Daily Telegraph? How is the audience supposed to feel about the two families?  Do you take a negotiated or oppositional reading and if so, how / why? Make reference to reception theory in your answer. (15 marks)

For the McCann’s story, I think that the dominant meaning could be that The Daily Telegraph wanted the audience to view the message that they wanted to in a simple form. They want the audience to agree with what they have written and presented so they can get the message across. Being able to show how powerful the McCann’s are as a middle-class family means that middle class families are able to do so much more than working class families. The audience is meant to feel really sympathetic towards the McCann’s family much more because their daughter went missing in a ‘different country’. The fact that she’s been missing in Portugal is used as a token to gain peoples sympathy because no one can imagine losing their child like this. Hence why, the audience has a preferred reading, as they can relate to the grieve that the parents are feeling. 

For the Matthew's story, I think The Daily Telegraph wanted the audience to have a preferred reading just like the story for McCann’s. So, the audience can still agree with them even though they had published a negative story about the Matthews. However, I think the audience would have had a negotiated reading mainly because some of the audience were able to understand the reasons why Karen did what she did because of her financial state but some of the audience would not understand the reasons why because they disagree with that Karen did regardless of any difficulties she was dealing with they the audience understand this story in different ways, either in a positive way or a in a negative way. It also depends whether the audience can and can’t relate with the message that’s being conveyed because the story is hard to interpret. The audience is supposed to feel frustrated with what Karen did to her own daughter, because she’s a mother who’s supposed to protect her daughter and care for her, but she allowed her to get kidnapped for money just reveals to the audience how much of a bad mother she is.  

The Daily Telegraph wants the audience to feel different emotions and intakes with different ideologies and messages from both of the families. Both stories are completely different from each other which is why they are targeting different audiences, from social class to morals and values. 

Newspaper Front Cover Task

Newspaper front cover plan

Add a BTS images

Discuss the outrage that was caused at the AMA’s

The hit singles in the album and recently create a single with Steve aoki.

The Korean 7 member band

Subheading: The kpop industry is getting news fans all over the world.

Headline: THE KOREAN BAND BTS ARE TAKING OVER THE WORLD BY THE STORM!

Newspaper articles:

The K-pop superstars where the first ever Korean pop band to perform at the American Music Awards and certainly raised the roof and got their fans called the ‘army’ chanting their name. The night was filled with other stars that performed that night at were Christina Aguilera, Demi Lovato, Kelly Clarkson, Lady Gaga, P!nk, Selena Gomez and Shawn Mendes, yet none of them were able to leave the audience in such awe like the BTS boy band.

Their epic performance had fans chanting their name.

The News Industry - classwork

Stuart Hall: Media Audience and Representation

Reception Theory -  a group of theories have emerged around reception, which focuses on the conditions in which audience "read" media texts, and how this contrasts with the intended meaning of the producer of the text.

Encoding - how women are put into media product such as a page 3 girl is desirable.


Decoding -  the meaning that is put of media for example she might be attractive, she is fake/plastic, this makes one insecure.

Polysemy - there a re arrange of potential meanings some may agree that we are all polysomic.
 

Reception Theory:

A dominant or preferred position is when the audience takes the full preferred meaning offered by the text, and the ideological assumptions behind the messages.

A negotiated position is when there is a mixture of adaptation and opposition to the dominant codes.  So the audience negotiates the meaning to fit with their “lived experience.”

An oppositional position is when the preferred reading is understood but opposed or re-drawn drawing on alternative values and attitudes. The ideological assumptions are rejected.

The News Industry

Five Things about Women In The Press

Sex Object:

The issue with newspapers is that they are objectifying and sexualising women. Their bodies don’t need to be seen in newspapers. Women are being openly exploited in the news and compared to sexually to the fact that any aged women are being targeted in a directed ways.

Wives and Mothers:

Mothers and wives are very easily stereotyped for the things they do and not for who they are. Even when women are accomplishing greater things other than being a traditional ‘housewives’ they’re home life is more emphasised more than their careers. Wives and mothers still have controversial topics that are still not seen as acceptable such are no children; it’s still an issue for this to be discussed.

Passive Roles:

Women are mostly seen playing the victim roles rather than playing strong lead roles. It’s quite rare and unlike for men to appear as the victim because of the stereotype that men are stronger than women and women are weak.

Relative Invisibility:

Men are mentioned in the Front pages and articles more than the successful women, although they are published are printed there is only a minority of good successfully front stories in the newspaper. Most of the front pages stories are consumed of negative stories about women. Most articles don’t even regard women which almost seems as they don’t contribute to anything.

Too fat/thin/old/young:

Women are shown these ideal flawless women on TV’s and magazines which are questioning women on the way they look and particularly young women. It adds quite a lot tension and pressure on to them and gives them many doubts about their appearances. The media industry is showing the public unrealistic and misleading figures and individuals that has now become a norm to look the ‘certain’ way to be accepted, which is harming women from the inside.

News: Task 2

Which News Values Apply In the News Article?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10804880/Islamophobia-People-grab-our-veils-call-us-terrorists-and-want-us-dead-What-its-really-like-to-be-a-Muslim-woman-in-Britain.html

In 1965, media researchers Galtung & Ruge analysed international news stories to find out what factors they had in common, and what factors placed them at the top of the news agenda worldwide. They came up with the following list of news values, each value is certain to come at the start of a TV news bulletin, or make the front page of a newspaper. Journalists and editors also draw heavily on their experience - of what an audience expects, of what stories have had a major impact on public consciousness in the past, of what is important - and each news organisation will have their own system of setting a news agenda. 

The telegraph has used a bold and worrying headline as it says ‘People grab our veils, call us terrorists and want us dead' the article certainly grabs the reader’s attention with a dramatic headline, it creates some sympathy towards the article because the headline is the first thing the accidence readers.  The short introduction underneath the headline seems to be a bit bigger than the article itself where it says ‘Islamophobia attacks have been on the rise ever since 9/11, but it is mostly women being attacked, a recent report suggests. Ava Vidal shares stories from British Muslim women who face every day awful abuse’ this is a news value of Continuity and narrative because the incident of 9/11 has been mentioned yet again after many years in this article, which shows a continuity of the incident, as it is an unforgettable event. Every article seems to unfold different versions of the event just like this article but, this article refers towards women in specific who are being discriminated and attacked ever since 9/11. 

Throughout this article you can see that islamophobia is being presented many times  that they have written is one of the news values which is negativity, the journalists know that a negative story is able to catch many people attention rather than a positive one. A bad/negative news stories are more likely to be reported than good news because they are more likely to score high on other news values, such as threshold, unexpectedness, unambiguity and meaningfulness. One of the things that were mentioned in the article was "On the same day a man in a business suit told me to ‘f**k off’. I was with a white male friend at the time. We both stopped in our tracks and the white guy who swore turned around, pointed at me and said, ‘yeah you!” this kind of behaviour has a bigger impact towards the audience because its seen as something horrible and worrying because people are hating on others. This type of language has a greater impact to the audience because it’s something shocking to read. It almost tries to show the reality of a person who’s going through is kind of abuse and it brings awareness to this kind of hate and it encourages people to stop doing this and stop letting others do this. 


The article also features an image of a Muslim women who’s covered herself in a hijab and niqab, often the society has address the as an oppression, that Muslim women are oppressed and forced to look like this which links back to negativity because it doesn’t matter how positive the article is or is socially awaring people about the discrimination the negative stereotypes are always rated above 'positive' part of the story. The negative tends to weigh more than the positive side of the story because it has a greater importance to it.
Another news value that is interpreted in this article story is proximity, the fact that the 9/11 incident took place in the US it’s easy to say that it has had a huge impact in the UK as well, because women are also receiving the same hate as the Muslim women are in the US. This article is published about the impacts on Muslim women in the UK, shows how quick the hatred has spread to our country. It’s important for us to acknowledge about it because this is currently happening in our country as were speaking. The audience that read this news will pay more attention to this now that is this occurring in the UK because they can relate more to stories that are close to them that involves people from their country. 

The personalisation news value is used very well in this article and can also be seen quite interesting to read since it has a story that particularly centres around a certain person, because they can be presented from a 'human interest' angle. The audience may find this article much more interesting to read because it’s from a real person who’s been through this kind of experience and can they speak about it and be honest about themselves just like Zab Mustefa does as she explains her side of the story; rather than read an over-rate personality stories, particularly those involves celebrities. I think that the audience likes to that read these personalised stories and are much more attentive about them and really care about a real story rather than a famous person/celebrity whom can can’t really relate to because they differ from each other. 

Overall there are many news values that are presented in this article and I think they are very important to have because they set out a form of boundaries that newspapers and journalists should regard when publishing a story. They really form the shape of the articles and really take in to consideration each value and represent them as to what type of journalists or Newspaper Company they are. 

The news industry - classwork

Journalistic Ethics 

Key journalist qualities:

Ethics - a shared system of morals for dealing with what is 'good' and 'bad'.
Truth and accuracy - the fact base principles, made sure to check your facts.
Self regulation - where the government does not regulate companies such as games, cinema. IPSO -  a 'self regulatory' body that regulates themselves rather than being regulated by the government.
Public interest - what is good for the public. 

Newspaper Comparison Task

News - newspaper conventions

Newspapers: Codes, Conventions and Content

Newspapers can be defined as a 'broadsheet' newspaper or a 'tabloid' newspaper. there are many differences between a boardsheet and a tabloid.

Broadsheet - is a bigger newspaper and contains more political and factual information who is targeted towards middle class/ high class audience.

Tabloid -  the layout of a tabloid is quite smaller and it contains gossip, celebrities information, more chatty content. They use techniques such as : pans, jokes, rhetorical questions. 

Galtung and Ruge's News Values - classwork

How News Is Presented?

News today is converged and dispersed across a range of platforms and with a huge range of sources/producers, including audiences who share the news and alter its meaning by adding their own hyperlinks and comments.

News values are general guidelines or criteria used by media outlets, such as newspapers or broadcast media, to determine how much prominence to give to a story.

Convergence - refers to the crossing over/ coming together of platforms and devices in media.

The "Other" - that a person is presented as a different from others. Non-white people in the media are often different defined according to what makes them different from the white majority. These values are usually negative.

Galtung and Ruge (1981) - these theorists argued that news is structured according to unspoken values , rather discovered. These are the key terms:

Unspoken Rules - that journalists follow when selecting and constructing the news

Frequency - this value is to do with the time scale of events perceived to be 'newsworthy' 


Threshold - this is the size of the event that is needed to be considered newsworthy. Events that happen to celebrity or an unusually violent event.

Proximity - this value is to do with how close to home a story is. More stories that happen within your local areas and region which are more publicised and are the main focuses since these stories are close to your 'home'. the local news is more westernised to be focused on, on the basis of social class.

Negativity - if its news, its generally bad news. no matter how positive the outcome is the catastrophe will weigh out more.

Predictability - although the key convention of news is to present events as surprising, actually a lot of these are predictable.

Continuity and narrative - news involves story-telling just like fiction, and it is convenient for journalists to cover stories which are likely to continue over a period of time, which new events unfolding. Binary opposite (Levi-Strauss) will be favoured to help to the audience to understand quite complex stories.

Composition - newspapers need to be balanced out, and if the editor feels that there is a disproportionate type of one news. Front covers may be composed to encourage the reader to make (often incorrect/ manipulative) connection between unlinked stories.

Personalisation - events are often personalised to give them a human interest angle.

Advertising & Marketing Task: Pitch Idea

The News Industry - classwork

Ownership 

Conglomeration - a number of different things, parts of items that are grouped together (a collection). A big company that owns a multiple small companies. the head of the company is called a 'parent' and the small companies are name 'subsidiary'. etc., timewarner is a parent.

News Corporation - owns financial news services, wireless media, harper Collins, new York post and News UK

Regulation - rules that are set out that regulate different media industries 

Ethics - a shared system of morals for dealing with what is 'good' and 'bad'.
Truth and accuracy - the fact base principles, made sure to check your facts.
Self regulation -
Public interest - 

Advertising & Marketing Task 4: Campaigning adverts and audience readings

“This is Abuse- would you stop yourself?” Advert

I think the audience of this advert is targeted towards young people as it features a young teen couple. This could also have a secondary audience which could be women because the message is conveyed by a female and she's the one who's been abused since she is the one who bangs on the glass window. It also looks like she's having a mind thought or a later reaction thought of what she should have and have done instead of letting the guys having his way with her.  The advert was directed by Shane Meadows and the home office and they initially wanted this advert to be made so it could show awareness of the abuse in relations towards women. One of the things that Home Secretary said by Alan Johnson "it was essential to change attitudes in order to stop abuse against females", the purpose of the advert is to make help teenagers to recognise the signs of abuse and equip them with the knowledge and confidence to seek help, as well as understanding the consequences of being abusive or controlling in a relationship. One of the way techniques the advert uses is emotional appeal very well, because it creates empathy towards the audience and the audience responds to the advert the way media producers want and expect them to which is a preferred reading. The emotion appeal compels the audience to react and agree with what is wrong in the advert. The advert uses a direct address to the audience because the advert speaks directly to the viewers especially towards the end when the advert adds a rhetorical question, which questions the audience.

Be Food Smart- Change4Life Advert

I think the government can help cultivate a change in the peoples eating habits buy showing different ways how harming some foods can be for our bodies, and then people can realise all the damage that they are doing and take some action to change their unhealthy lifestyles.  You see the method of reputation in the advert where you can see the use of sugar multiple times and I feel like it’s used to make the viewers realise how harmful a small amount of sugar can be in the long run, it’s almost as if the advert creators want the viewers to remember it also so they can change this way and be cautious about how much one inputs. One of the great ways the adverts tries to convince the viewers how bad sugar is the way the sugar was used to make the words. It makes a greater impact towards the viewers because it’s using sugar to show the problems and illnesses sugar can lead to, which ultimately compels us to agree that we should be in control of what we eat. Another method that is used is the expert’s information; it’s used to show the amount of sugar that’s dangerous to us and children making them vulnerable.

The Starbucks #WhiteCupContest Advert

User generated advertising has become so powerful in this day and age because brand consumers are able to be vocal about products by, sharing photos, promoting a hashtag or even tweeting about a sale all through social media. Todays consumers have great opportunities to share their experiences with the brands products, which ultimately helps them in their sales. Consumers trust other consumers more than the direct marketing that the brands do because they believe that consumer can give realistic views and opinions regarding the products unlike paid marketing. The contribution of a collective intelligence audience is a good way of coming to an end conclusion about a product since consumers can easily engage with each other about products. Consumers are now used to having a group of dedicated buyer/reviewers at their disposal wherever they are, and knowing that someone else had a good experience with a product is a powerful motive to buy.

Terms - classwork

Key Terms

User generated content (UGC) - content made by non-professionals (social media posts, blogs, pinterest) 

Sharable content - is the potential of a given piece of content to be transmitted, or shared, by a third party. If you can complement your content with genuine, personal engagements via social media on a regular basis, eventually you'll build a loyal audience of followers on your social platforms.

Pro-Sumer -  we are no longer 'simply' consumers - we produce our own content. since 1980 the term 'prosumer' has been used to describe the blurring of the lines between producers and consumers. 

Participatory culture - today we take part in the media, rather than just consume it. 

Collective intelligence - this is a concept which is used by media theorist henry Jenkins proposed that "nobody knows everything. we all know something. therefore together we can know everything (or nearly everything)".

Audience readings - classwork

Audience readings

Preferred reading - when the audience responds to the product the way media producers want and expect them to.

Negotiated reading - this is when a member of the audience partly agrees with the part of the product such as a film or a documentary

Oppositional reading - when the audience are is complete disagreement with the products message and meaning

Modes of address

Direct address - speaking to the viewer directly, using 'you' or 'your'. which reinforces preferred reading

Indirect address - it is a more of an 'objective' speech, which is more descriptive to use.

Authoritative - it what's telling you what to do, which they convey a clear message.

Familiar - it is more of a chatty advert, which engages as your friend as friendly conversation, a voice that connects to your more personally.