Newspapers: Regulation

The debate regarding the regulation of the newspaper industry has been one of the most controversial and important media issues of the last 15 years.

You need to understand how the newspaper industry is regulated, how some people think it should be regulated and what might happen in the future. Most importantly, you need to form your own opinion on newspaper regulation and how the industry should operate following the 2012 Leveson Inquiry.

Newspaper regulation: notes

A brief history of newspaper regulation
The newspaper industry was regulated by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) between 1990 and 2014. It was a voluntary regulator with no legal powers and was heavily criticised for saying it found no evidence of phone hacking at the News of the World in 2007.

The PCC had a code of practice that provided guidelines for newspapers in how to report inaccuracies, crime, news stories involving children and more. However, the PCC was effectively run by the newspaper editors themselves and papers merely had to print a small apology when the regulator ruled against them.

The Leveson Inquiry 2011-12
The Leveson Inquiry in 2011-12 was a judicial public enquiry ordered by the government into the culture and ethics of the British press. This followed the revelations of the phone hacking scandal and the closure of the News of the World.

Post-Leveson: IPSO and IMPRESS
Following the Leveson report, a new press regulator was introduced: the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). IPSO is more powerful than the PCC and can order newspapers to print apologies or corrections on the front page or fine papers. However, it crucially doesn’t act on Leveson’s key recommendation that the regulator is backed by government legislation.

Alongside IPSO, IMPRESS was also set up as an alternative regulator. This was fully compliant with Leveson – but no major newspapers have signed up with IMPRESS.

Watch the following videos on Leveson and the press regulation debate:

BBC News overview:

Newsnight debate:

Channel 4 News debate:



Read the following articles and features on the press regulation debate:

Viewpoints – Should the press be regulated? BBC website
THEOS think tank website – press regulation debate 
Guardian letters – How should the press be regulated?

Newspaper regulation: blog tasks

Task One: Media Magazine article and questions

Read the Media Magazine article: From Local Press to National Regulator in MM56 (p55). You'll find the article in our Media Magazine archive here. Once you've read the article, answer the following questions:

1) Keith Perch used to edit the Leicester Mercury. How many staff did it have at its peak and where does Perch see the paper in 10 years' time?

2) How does Perch view the phone hacking scandal?

3) What does IPSO stand for and how does it work?

4) What is Perch's view of newspaper ownership?

5) Do you agree with his view that broadcast news should have less regulation so that TV channels can support particular political parties or people?


Task Two: Newspaper regulation exam question

Write an answer on your blog answering the following exam question:

What are the arguments for and against statutory regulation of the newspaper industry? [20 marks]

Aim to write an answer of around 400-500 words featuring at least three detailed paragraphs. Make sure you cover both sides of the debate. This topic could well be our 20-mark essay at the end of Paper 1, Section B so it's great preparation for the summer exams.

Extension task: The role of media in democracies

Read this excellent article from the Constitution Unit on why media plays such an important role in democracies - and how regulation and affect this. Does this change your opinion on whether the newspaper industry should face statutory regulation? 

Due date: on Show my Homework

Newspapers: The future of journalism

One of the factors we must consider when studying the decline of the newspaper industry is the importance of news and journalism to society and democracy. 

Technology moves on and industries evolve - but newspapers have traditionally played an important role in holding governments to account, exposing corruption and keeping the public informed about the world they live in. As media students, we need to consider the impact to society of news coverage being driven by 'clicks' and ending up with funny cat videos rather than hard-hitting investigative journalism. 

We've got some excellent video resources to work with on this topic. Both of our videos refer to the 2016 Best Picture winner at the Oscars - Spotlight. This is director Tom McCarthy's film based on the true story of Boston Globe reporters investigating widespread child abuse in the Catholic Church. We highly recommend you watch this film as part of your work on newspapers.

John Oliver on journalism

British comedian John Oliver presents a show called Last Week Tonight on HBO in America. In a previous episode, he put together a report on the decline of journalism in America and its replacement by 'clickbait' stories rather than real news. Watch it here:



Clay Shirky on news: don’t build a paywall around a public good

Clay Shirky is a professor at NYU (New York University) and a worldwide expert on digital and social media. As we know from our work on Online, Social and Participatory Media, Shirky is a named media theorist for A Level Media and he also makes a compelling argument for the role news plays in society. Interestingly, he argues against paywalls - the subscription model that some newspapers use to make money in the digital age - and says that news is a 'public good' that is vital in a healthy democracy. 

The Future of Journalism: Blog tasks

Part 1: Clay Shirky lecture

Go to the Nieman Lab webpage (part of Harvard university) and watch the video of Clay Shirky presenting to Harvard students. The video is also available on YouTube below but the Nieman Lab website has a written transcript of everything Shirky says. 


Play the clip AND read along with the transcript below to ensure you are following the argument. You need to watch from the beginning to 29.35 (the end of Shirky's presentation). Once you've watched and read the presentation and made notes (you may want to copy and paste key quotes from the transcript which is absolutely fine), answer the questions below:

1) Why does Clay Shirky argue that 'accountability journalism' is so important and what example does he give of this?

2) What does Shirky say about the relationship between newspapers and advertisers? Which websites does he mention as having replaced major revenue-generators for newspapers (e.g. jobs, personal ads etc.)?

3) Shirky talks about the 'unbundling of content'. This means people are reading newspapers in a different way. How does he suggest audiences are consuming news stories in the digital age?

4) Shirky also talks about the power of shareable media. How does he suggest the child abuse scandal with the Catholic Church may have been different if the internet had been widespread in 1992?

5) Why does Shirky argue against paywalls? 

6) What is a 'social good'? In what way might journalism be a 'social good'?

7) Shirky says newspapers are in terminal decline. How does he suggest we can replace the important role in society newspapers play? What is the short-term danger to this solution that he describes?

8) Look at the first question and answer regarding institutional power. Give us your own opinion: how important is it that major media brands such as the New York Times or the Guardian continue to stay in business and provide news?

Part 2: MM55 - Media, Publics, Protest and Power

Media Magazine 55 has an excellent feature on power and the media. Go to our Media Magazine archive, click on MM55 and scroll to page 38 to read the article Media, Publics, Protest and Power', a summary of Media academic Natalie Fenton’s talk to a previous Media Magazine conference. Answer the following questions:

1) What are the three overlapping fields that have an influence on the relationship between media and democracy?

2) What is ‘churnalism’ and what issues are there currently in journalism?

3) What statistics are provided by Fenton to demonstrate the corporate dominance of a small number of conglomerates? 

4) What is the 'climate of fear' that Fenton writes about in terms of politics and the media? 

5) Fenton finishes her article by discussing pluralism, the internet and power. What is your opinion on this crucial debate - has the internet empowered audiences and encouraged democracy or is power even more concentrated in the hands of a few corporate giants?

Complete for homework: due date on Show my Homework.

Newspapers: News Values

Galtung and Ruge defined a set of news values to explain how journalists and editors decide that certain stories and photographs were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not. 

The following list is adapted from their work:

Immediacy: has it happened recently?
Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain?
Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
Frequency: does the event happen fairly regularly? 
Unambiguity: is it clear and definite?
Predictability: did we expect it to happen?
Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event?
Continuity: has this story already been defined as news?
Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?
Personalisation: Is it a personal or human interest story?
Negativity: is it bad news?
Exclusivity: do any other newspapers have this story?
Visual impact: are there amazing pictures accompanying the story?
Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death.


News Values: Blog task

Read Media Factsheet 76: News Values and complete the following questions/tasks. 
Our Media Factsheet archive is available here - you'll need your Greenford Google login to access.

1) What example news story does the Factsheet use to illustrate Galtung and Ruge's News Values? Why is it an appropriate example of a news story likely to gain prominent coverage?

2) What is gatekeeping?

3) What are the six ways bias can be created in news?

4) How have online sources such as Twitter, bloggers or Wikileaks changed the way news is selected and published?

5) In your opinion, how has the digital age changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? 

6) How would you update these news values for the digital age? Choose TWO of Galtung and Ruge's news values and say how they have been affected by the growth of digital technology.

E.g. Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on social media or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken so different angles might be required. Newspapers now contain more comment or opinion rather than the breaking story.  

Due date: on Show my Homework

Newspapers: The decline in print media

Our final topic is newspapers: an industry that has changed hugely in the last 25 years due to the impact of the internet.

This is the final set of targeted CSPs - we will be studying the Audience and Industry key concepts plus all relevant contexts for the Daily Mail and the Guardian newspapers. This means newspapers will come up in Paper 1, Section B of the exams. Here's one Daily Mail front page we may want to reference:

Notes from the lesson

In the lesson, we looked at the history of the newspaper and some key terminology we need to learn:

Newspapers: hard and soft news

Newspapers cover a range of stories that are generally divided into two categories:

Hard news: stories related to current affairs, politics, economics, wars and other serious news.

Soft news: stories related to entertainment, sport, celebrities, gossip, scandal and human interest/lifestyle topics.

Newspapers: tabloid and broadsheet

Newspapers were traditionally available in two sizes: tabloid and broadsheet. Today, most newspapers are in the smaller broadsheet size but the terms are still used to describe the style of paper:

Tabloid: focusing largely on soft news, famous examples include the Sun and the Mirror. Generally read by more working class audience. Mid-market tabloids are a middle ground between tabloid and broadsheet and include the Daily Mail. 

Broadsheet: serious newspapers that focus more on hard news. The Times, Guardian and Telegraph are all examples. 

Newspapers: sources of news

Newspapers tend to get their news content from two sources:

Journalists: newspapers employ reporters and photographers to attend events, interview people and write stories. 

News agencies: Reuters and Associated Press are examples of global news agencies that are independent institutions that employ journalists to write stories that newspapers and other media organisations can pay to use.

Increasingly in the digital age, newspapers are sourcing news from their audiences using citizen journalism. This is sometimes criticised as creating clickbait – an example of soft news aimed simply to attract online readers.

The decline of newspapers

In the last 20 years, the newspaper industry has faced a sharp decline due to the rise of the internet.

In 2003, almost 30 million newspapers were sold in the UK every day. By 2017 that was down to 12.4 million (source: Ofcom). 

Newspapers have traditionally made their money in two ways: through the cover price and by selling advertising. With so much news available for free online, audiences are not buying newspapers so both these sources of income have been decimated.

The Wall Street Journal produced a short video demonstrating how the industry has changed in the last 100 years:

Once you've learned the key terminology, watched the video and considered the decline in the industry, work through the blog tasks below.

Blog tasks: The decline in print media

Part 1: Ofcom report into news consumption

Read this Ofcom report on the consumption of news in the UK and answer the following questions (bullet points/short answers are fine):

1) Look at the headlines from the report on page 5 & 6. Pick three that you think are interesting and bullet point them here. Why did you pick those three in particular?  

2) Now look at the motivations for following news which differs by age on pages 7 & 8. What are the main reasons people gave for following news? What are the percentages? 

3) Look at the platforms used, by age on page 9. What trends do you notice based on the platforms used and by the different age groups?

4) Look at how online news continues to be a key platform for receiving news on page 14. How does the internet enable audiences to access the news in different ways? Can you provide any examples of news organisations with percentages? 

5) Look at the news brands (print newspapers and digital offerings) on page 20. Can you provide percentages of readership of print vs. online?

6) Looking again at page 20 for news brands - how are print newspapers rated by their metrics - can you offer the different metrics with percentages? 

 

Part 2: Factsheet - The death of print media

Go to our Media Factsheet archive and open Factsheet 165: The death of print media. Our Media Factsheet archive is on the Media Shared drive: M:\Resources\A Level\Media Factsheets or you can find it online here - you'll need to log in using your Greenford Google login.

Read the Factsheet and complete the following questions/tasks (bullet points/short answers are fine):

1) What has happened to print media in the last 30 years?

2) Why is the Independent newspaper such a good case study for the decline in print media?

3) What was the Independent newspaper famous for?

4) What did the then-owner of the Independent, Evgeny Lebedev, say about the newspaper's digital-only future?

5) How do online newspapers make money?

6) What did the Independent's longest-serving editor Simon Kelner warn regarding the switch to digital?

7) What is the concern with fake news? What does 'post-truth' refer to?

8) What is your view on the decline in print media? Should news be free? Is it a concern that established media brands such as the Independent can no longer afford to exist as a printed newspaper?

Due date: on Show my Homework.

Newspapers: Weekly Media homework - news stories

For the Newspapers unit, you have an ongoing mini-homework every week: to find, read and post TWO news stories on your blog.

The very simple detail: every week you must find, read, and post two news stories from the websites of our two newspaper CSPs (one from Mail Online and one from The Guardian website):

Mail Online
The Guardian website 

This will help familiarise yourself with the two newspapers over several weeks so you can recognise how the news stories reflect the values, ideologies and ownership contexts of the two CSPs.

Newspaper news story research: blog task

Create ONE blogpost that you return to and update weekly. Call it 'Newspaper news story research'. Then, each week you need to visit the MailOnline website and the Guardian website and choose one story from each to summarise and share. 

Most importantly, you need to do the following on your blogpost for each story...

1. Copy the headline, date and link.
2. Briefly summarise the story in a sentence or two: is this is an example of hard news or soft news? Does it reflect the politics or ideological stance of that newspaper/website?
3. Explain in a sentence how or why this story appeals to the audience of that newspaper (use media terminology and theory if you can). Is it quality journalism or an example of clickbait?

We'll be sharing our stories as a starter each week and this will ensure you build up a range of stories from both CSPs to provide examples to use in exam questions and essays. 

Due: EVERY week for the next five weeks. Just update the same blogpost with additional stories each time! 

Media Paper 2 mock exam - learner response

This is the second of your vital learner response tasks following the full set of A Level Media mock exams.

Remember, the most important aspect of any mock exam is making mistakes and learning from them. With Paper 2 this is even more significant as it contains the synoptic element  in question 4 and extended essays on in-depth topics throughout.

Here, we need to closely analyse out performance in Paper 2 and identify specific ways we will improve for the real exam on Thursday 5 June (PM). Complete the following learner response tasks in a new blogpost on your Media Exam blog called 'Paper 2 mock exam learner response'. 

Paper 2 mock exam: learner response

1) Type up your feedback in full (you do not need to write mark/grade if you do not wish to).

2) Did you succeed in meeting or exceeding your target grade for A-Level Media in this paper? If not, how many additional marks do you need to achieve your target grade in Paper 2?

These are the grade boundaries we've used (out of 84): 

A* = 71; A = 62, B = 52; C = 43; D = 33; E = 24

Now read through the real AQA mark scheme for Paper 2 and the examiner's report (see your Media teacher's Google Classroom for both of these documents).

3) Write a question-by-question analysis of your performance. For each question, write how many marks you got from your the number available and identify any points that you missed by carefully studying the AQA indicative content in the mark scheme.

Example Q2: 8/25 marks

Additional points: I didn't focus on the question - validity of theory. I should have...

4) Look at question 4 - the synoptic question. How many of the four key concepts did you cover in your answer? Write a new essay plan for this question using the indicative content in the mark scheme and taking care to include at least three of Language - Representations - Audience - Industries. You can use bullet points but make sure you offer enough content to meet the criteria for Level 5 (top level). This will be somewhere between 3-4 well-developed paragraphs planned in some detail.

5) Based on the whole Paper 2 Learner response, plan five topics / concepts / CSPs / theories that you will prioritise in your Easter Media revision timetable.

If you don't finish this in the lesson, complete it for homework - due date on Satchel One

Media Paper 1 mock exam - Learner response

You've now completed your mock exams and so need to be identifying the specific areas to revise and improve on before the final exams in the summer.

The most important aspect of any mock exam is making mistakes and learning from them.

Here, we need to closely analyse our performance across each question in Paper 1 and identify specific ways we will improve for the real exam on Thursday 14 May (PM). Complete the following learner response tasks in a new blogpost on your Media Exam blog called: 'Paper 1 mock exam learner response'.

1) Type up any feedback in full (you do not need to write mark/grade if you do not wish to).

Go to your Media teacher's Google Classroom and find the mark scheme and examiner's report uploaded. This is vital as the paper was an official exam paper and therefore the mark scheme tells us a lot about what AQA are expecting us to produce.

2) Write a question-by-question analysis of your performance. For each question, write how many marks you got from the number available and identify and points that you missed by carefully studying the AQA indicative content in the mark scheme:

Example: Q1: 4/8 marks

Additional points: Using Roland Barthes’ theory of semiotics, the National Trust advert “What will take your breath away?” can be analysed through denotation, connotation and myth. Denotatively, the advert shows images of British landscapes and historic sites. Connotatively, these suggest peace, escape and emotional fulfilment, reinforced by the slogan which implies awe and inspiration. This creates a myth that British nature and heritage are naturally restorative and meaningful, promoting the ideology that visiting National Trust sites is an essential and valuable experience.

3) Look at Question 4 - a 20-mark essay evaluating Judith Butler's gender is a performance theory. Write an essay plan for this question using the indicative content in the mark scheme and with enough content to meet the criteria for Level 4 (top level). This will be somewhere between 3-4 well-developed paragraphs plus an introduction answering the question planned in some detail.

4) Based on the whole of your Paper 1 learner response, plan FIVE topics / concepts / CSPs / theories that you will prioritise in your summer exam Media revision timetable.

Complete this learner response for your homework if you don't finish it in class - due date on Satchel One.