Curran and Seaton present the view that a free press relies on a free market where individual newspapers can compete through their political stances and points of view.
Analyze the ways that The i and the Daily Mail attempt to establish a distinctive identity within this free market. To what extent has this been successful? Refer to the specific edition of your case study – for both papers – as well as, on-line versions of these publications.
James Curran and Seaton suggest the media needs a form of regulation as if the media can post whatever they want, whenever they want this means false, unfiltered, humiliating media could get published and it won’t matter if it’s real or not so Curran suggests we need to have a filter to which media goes through what is also known as “flack”. Through this process, the government could stop negative media against them from being published and for the public as well as watchdogs, who are mainly anonymous people who keep an eye out for the public, to ensure there is no corrupt people or media against the “common man”. They also suggest the idea of the Free Press should be free from interference/ ownership/political control as if there is no free press, free from biased control there is no neutral middle ground to which consumers can make their own assumptions to decide which beliefs, political views to follow.
When considering “flacking” we can link to Chomsky as he proposes the theory of the five filters of consent to which “flacking” is one of them, the media goes through this to control the public. Firstly is scale then Advertising, sourcing mass media, flacking, and finally Common enemy.
Cohan also has his own ideas of control of media as he believes that the government shouldn’t be in control of it as I mentioned before they regulate and filter the media but there is no room of regulation on the government regulating as if they decide the media portrays negative or shameful views of the government they can decide to filter this hiding it from the public. We can relate back to Curran and Seaton as the people who regulate the regulation done by the government are Watchdogs to ensure there are no corrupt people in power hiding crucial information from the public.
We can also consider what Habermas ideology of the public sphere a safe space where the idea of making connections with each over away from the eye of the government where the public can discuss and criticize the government, also known as the rise of the people to which Habermas believes is healthy to judge what they believe is right, unfair, unjust. However, mass media, as well as globalization, has changed and affected as people don’t tend to meet in person to challenge the idea of the government in person anymore as if people are going to share their views it will be online on social media.
the Daily Mail is a right-wing paper and is owned by Jonathan Harmsworth, who is the 4th Viscount Rothermere the current chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and the General Trust. The Daily Mail is a conglomerate what are powerful influential groups that own various businesses what in this case the Daily Mail owns the “I” also has operations in forty and more countries through its subsidiaries, what are smaller companies controlled by larger ones ie the Daily mail controls these, RMS, DMG Information, DMG Events, Euromoney Institutional Investor, DMG Ventures and DMG Media. the average age of the Daily Mail reader is 58 years old and is of the lower middle class. Jonathan is the great-grandson of one of the original co-founders of the Daily Mail,” Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere” who was very right-wing as he supported Hitler and Nazi’s. When considering the statistics 53% of Daily Mail readers voted for the Conservative Party, compared to 21% for Labour and 17% for the Liberal Democrats so what we understand from this is is more than the majority are right-wingers, conservatives read the Dailymail. When looking at the Daily mail Let’s look at firstly Scale as the first filter of manufacturing consent in Chomsky theory in manufacturing consent, the ideology of scale is how powerful, how influential it is, For example, The “i” and the Daily Mail, The daily mail owns The “i” and when we look at the daily mail scale we can see patterns of power. The Daily Mail in 2016 made revenue of 1.6 billion pounds with 9,600 employees (in 2014) so they are quite a powerful company as they have a large number of people working for them with a high amount of revenue made. The daily mail has vertical integration what is when a production company owns the means of production, distribution and exhibition of their product, in this example newspaper, and are of the same company, because of this they will receive all of the profit. The daily mail newspaper circulates 1,158,192 copies of its newspaper.
The I is more recent compared to its counterpart of the Daily Mail as it came to exist in 26th of October 2010. The i like I mentioned beforehand is owned by The Daily Mail and the general trust as the daily mail bought the i for approximately 49.6 million. however, unlike its owner magazine, the i is Liberal so this means its neutral as it’s not in favour of one political view. The readership is 60% male and the rest is women so it has a higher male readership. When linking back to the idea that the I is neutral we can consider Curren and Seaton as they suggest the idea of the Free Press which is when Media should be free from interference/ ownership/political control as to when there is the free press, free from biased control there is a neutral middle ground to which consumers can make their own assumptions to decide which beliefs, political views to follow for example when we consider the American election there was Biden to which he has now won the election and is part of the democratic party whereas trump is part of the republican party to which the I remained neutral as when Biden gave his speech about how he “vows to heal America” and how the opposition aren’t “enemies” but fellow “Americans” they didn’t give a specific idea on this quote they didn’t say how great he is or how he’s incompetent they remain neutral for the audience to come up with an appropriate decision to their own views.
However The Daily Mail tends to be biased in favour of right-wing ideals however this doesn’t mean they do not stray from this, for example, they posted the following “Since when did the Lamestream Media decide who the President is?’ Defiant Trump doubles down on refusing to concede and Melania backs his claims of election fraud – as he ignores Republicans telling him to give up the fight” even though the Daily mail tends to follow the right-wing ideal sometimes they will do the opposite to attract a new following as when your not neutral and bias on or political view you immediately cut down ur readership. When looking at the quote mentioned previously The Daily Mail is going against Trump saying how he’s ignoring the words of his own people, his own party as Trump as he is notorious for goes against the media saying they do not pick the president as the media at the moment are covering Biden as the new president as it a new, hot, important topic as Trump is demanding a recount of votes as once again what Trump is notorious for is the “fake” especially in the media and he believes the fake, illegal votes should not be counted and they need to recount the “legal votes”. When we consider the print language displayed below they show the tweets made by Trump and Ivanka as evidence next to a “silly” image of Trump as if to portray the idea that Trump is idiotic and the idea of having to recount the votes idiotic, devaluing his tweet by showing the “idiotic” image of Trump and the effect of this is to persuade even more people to believe Trump as a “Sore Loser” as he “digs in”. This can be a reference to two things the idea that Trump is making a “dig” at the media and the counting system as he demands a recount or how he’s staying where he is and won’t leave until he receives what he believes to be a fair counting to which is when he gets elected. By using Big Bold Font with the black background it emphasises the idea of Trump “dig”ing and the ironic idea of making a “dig” at Trump as they emphasise the devaluation and belittling Trump by referring to him by his first name, Donald, the media has a “dig” at him as he has such a bad relationship with the media.
When considering The i and the Daily MAil we can consider audience theory specifically Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to which he believes that people actively look to satisfy their needs based on a hierarchy of social and psychological desires ie the personal needs are 1.Understanding Self, 2. Enjoyment, 3.Escapism and social 1.knowledge about the world, 2.Self confidence, 3.Strengthen connections with family, lastly 4.Strengthen connections with friends. When applying this to the Daily Mail and the i what needs do they satisfy? They seem to satisfy the obvious of knowledge about the world, for example, a big event was the presidential debate but in a sense, we could argue it helps with understanding the self as the i is neutral and so this means they can provide non-biased information to which the audience decides what they agree on as the self is always changing and evolving and what consists the self are fragments of many things like morals, preference, gender, race etc and one’s views help build the self so we can argue it helps to understand our self. When considering this we can consider Gerbner cultivation theory as media shapes the way individuals think within society and how over time the effect that media has added up to our perception of the world around us helping to add to one’s self as ones view also consist to makes one’s self.
So what we can conclude from my essay is that the media can be huge, influential, powerful identities what can influence the way we think to lean more to one perspective or to simply let us the audience simply decide for ourselves as the media varies.
I Have discussed what the Daily Mail is as well as the I and who its controlled by, some history and some statistics and with help of theorists we can come to understand the effect media as on us as Paul Lazarfeld said we are active consumers who do not simply just consume media as we make our own judgements however we can be persuaded into a certain ideology/ view