The news can be accessed in many different ways.
Different News providers provide different types of news and distribute that
news in many different platforms. They do this in order to target a certain
audience, so that the audience will keep using that news provider. In this
essay I will present to you different media platforms and what news providers
like to use them and why.
The first media platform is Print. Print is still a
very good way of distributing news because they can be accessed easily through
shops and you can even get newspapers like Metro for free on public transport.
Newspapers are presented through articles which are in order of importance. The
most exciting or important article is usually near the front to ensure that
more readers engage with that article. An example of a news provider that uses
print is The Guardian.
The Guardian was originally called the Manchester
Guardian and has been running since 1821. It was in 1959 that it changed its
name to The Guardian. It is a daily newspaper, and it has won the Newspaper of
the Year award four times. The newspaper targets middle class audiences, and politically,
the newspaper has a left wing bias within its articles. This could be because
The Guardian is owned by The Scott Trust, who are Liberals. This means that the
Newspaper will target left wing audiences since they will agree with the point
of view in the articles in the newspaper. This contrasts with a newspaper like
The Daily Mail.
The Daily Mail first started in 1896 and is the
second most selling daily newspaper in the UK. The newspaper wanted to target
audiences which who were lower/middle class, and therefore made their price
more affordable for audiences like that. However, the newspaper is mostly read
by ABC1 audiences who are in the upper middle class. This could be because The
Daily Mail’s content has a conservative bias, and has sometimes been accused of
being racist. Because of this the newspaper should appeal to people with more
right wing views.
When reading articles from both newspapers you can
clearly see the political contrast when it comes to articles on Brexit or
Donald Trump. Articles which you find in The Guardian create folk devils out of
people who voted out during Brexit, and Donald Trump, while as in The Daily
Mail, you can see in their articles that they create folk devils out of the
European Union, and can sometimes be perceived as “Pro-Trump” which is why left
wingers despise the newspaper so much.
Web 2.0 is used to describe how the internet has
become easy to understand and interact with by all. News providers like The
Guardian and The Daily Mail recognized this, which is why they both have
websites which users can access their news on, to reach an even wider audience.
However, some news providers took this a step further, and made sure that their
news was only accessible online, an example of this is The Independent.
The Independent started in 1986 is a printed newspaper and it was only in 2016 that
it stopped being printed and became just an online news provider. However, it
was in 2008 that their website was relaunched 2008 in order to look more
appealing in order become more accessible for all users. Their website also
includes interactive features such as videos and images. The Independent
considers itself to be free from political bias, yet its articles actually have
a center left point of view. In 2014 The Independent started another website
called i100 which lets users share news content with each other and interact
with each other in a way similar to social media. This allows Citizen to
emerge, since through this, website users can express their views and report
what they think is true, which is good because people can hear news from the
public instead of from media companies.
The Huffington Post is another
news provider which only distributes its news through its website, and it
started in 2005, which is interesting because the term “Web 2.0” only became
popular in 2004 however unlike the independent it is owned by Verizon through
AOL which is a conglomerate, meaning the websites content is not free from
bias. In fact, The Huffington Post has very left wing views, which was shown
during the 2016 elections. Many articles which were on this topic ended with an
editor’s note which said “Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and
is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has
repeatedly pledged to ban all Musilims-1.6 billion members of an entire
religion-from entering the U.S”. Funnily enough when Trump won, the Huffington
post stopped this.
The second media platform is
TV. TV is an incredibly powerful media to use when it comes to News,
considering that the audience doesn’t have to put much energy into watching a
screen tell them about recent events, which means that they are more than happy
to watch the news. TV is also incredibly accessible to all, since a mass
audience have a TV in their house, and also a mass audience like to end their
day by sitting down and watching TV. The first news provider I shall focus on
is Sky News.
Sky News was announced to
start in 1988 by Rupert Murdoch, and then started in 1989. It is a 24-hour news
channel and is broadcasted internationally. Sky news isn’t just accessible on
TV though, because it can be watched online, and can be also be accessed
through their app. This is due to technological convergence, because people’s
phones are not just phones anymore, they are computers, cameras, video
recorder, voice recorder and much more, which is why we can now access what was
originally only available on TV on our smart phones. This is also because some
people just using social media instead of watching TV because they think it is
better. Sky News is also accessible for people that may not be able to afford a
TV license, since it is also available on free view. In 2008 Sky news began to
film using HD cameras, meaning that Sky News became available to watch in High
Definition. However, Sky News is suspected to be biased since it is owned by
21th Century Fox and therefore Rupert Murdoch…
Another news provider that
uses TV is the BBC News. The news channel started in 1997 and was originally
called BBC News 24, and then changed its name to BBC News in 2008. BBC News is
also a 24-hour channel like Sky News. However unlike Sky News the channel is
considered to be free from political bias, I think this is because the BBC is owned
by the government and therefore needs to appeal to a wide audience of different
political views, however some people believe that BBC News leans towards
right-wing views. In 2007 BBC News made it so that users could catch up and
watch news videos online, due to Web 2.0.
CNN News is also another news
provider which uses TV. CNN stands for “Cable News Network” and is another
24-hour channel which started in 1980.
When CNN News was started it was the first 24-hour news channel. CNN News
is owned by Time Warner, so it is likely that CNN will have political bias.
The third media platform is
Radio. Radio is still used today, although it is considered to be dying, as
less and less people use it. However, the radio is still powerful, since people
like to listen to it while engaging in other activities, since you can’t do
that when watching or reading the news.
The first example of a news
provider that uses Radio is BBC Radio 4. BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that
broadcasts news as well other spoken programmes on current affairs, history,
comedy, science and drama. Politically the news channel has been criticized for
being too conservative. Like the BBC News Channel BBC Radio 4 has an online
catch up which can be easily accessed.
Another news provider that
uses Radio is Sky News, which started in 1999. Sky News offers an hourly
bulletin which allows users to keep updated regularly on news. Sky news also
has an online catch up service for their radio programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment