9th March 2017

Explain how the political context in which newspapers are produced, influences their
ownership & regulation.
Refer to the Guardian & Daily Mail Newspapers you have studied in your answer.
[10 Marks]

There are two main genres of newspapers, broadsheet & tabloid. A broadsheet is a
newspaper with a large format which is regarded as more serious & less sensational than
tabloids, an example of this would be The Guardian. Whereas a tabloid is dominated by
sensational stories & typically popular in style, for instance The Daily Mail. Newspapers
inevitably tend to be more biased politically to either left or right wing, this subsequently
can lead to there being bias in different ways throughout the newspaper: headline bias,
facts & statistics bias, image & photography bias. Bias can make events/ stories come across
in a more favourable or adverse way, presenting to the audience what can be a micro
viewpoint from a mass event. The Daily Mail is a tabloid that favours left wing policies,
which in Parliament is represented by parties such as the Labour Party, therefore presents
itself as bias towards the political left wing. On the other hand, The Guardian is a
broadsheet that favours right wing policies which are conservative – which in Parliament is
represented by parties such as the Conservatives. These different political contexts
underline the main tones & viewpoints of the newspapers, & therefore can appeal more so
to those who hold similar viewpoints or are in political agreement with a certain newspaper.
For instance, both the Daily Mail & the Guardian could print on their front pages about
Brexit but could appeal to different consumers with conflicting viewpoints & be perceived
by each reader in a different way. The Guardian’s serious chain of events & factual content
is more likely to appeal to right wing supporters who hold a more conservative viewpoint.
Stuart Hall looked at the role of social positioning in interpreting media texts, he states
there are three different ways in which a consumer can ‘read’ / perceive media texts:
dominant/ preferred reading, negotiated reading & the oppositional reading. The factual
context on the front page of the Guardian could furthermore push the newspapers
dominant/ preferred reading onto their target audience. Similarly, bias can also impact the
consumers reading of a newspaper. Bias headlines & front page images could be seen as a
way of further persuading the reader to interpret the newspaper in the way in which the
writer intended them too. Media regulation is the control or guidance of mass media by
governments or other bodies. As demonstrated, the government has a massive political
impact on newspapers. This impact not only varies the political context across tabloids &
broadsheets in the UK but also greatly impacts how readers interpret newspapers, & can
impact the demographic who read certain newspapers.