Monday 21 March 2011

Today's front pages and the modern media

Even if you don't normally purchase a daily paper I recommend that today you pop into your local newsagent and have a scan of today's front pages; they reveal an awful lot about our news media.

The first point is that the Daily Mail, The Sun, Daily Mirror, The Guardian, Financial Times are all using the following picture taken by Goran Tomasevic of the Reuters news wire:


Few outside the media world realise how dependent we are on agencies such as Reuters who supply pictures like this but also copy - facts, figures, quotes or even whole reports - that end up in our newspapers. As resources in media organisations become ever more stretched this dependency is set to grow.

The second point is the tone of today's front pages reveals an awful lot about each newspaper's editorial stance. Those who have used this striking image seen above have accompanied it with very different headlines.

The Guardian's Coalition attacks wreak havoc on ground troops sets the tone for a piece focusing on those on the receiving end of allied air strikes, the Daily Mail reports on Liam Fox's comments that Gaddafi is a 'legitimate target', while The Sun leads with the result of last night's bombing by saying Top Guns..1, Mad Dog..0.

Keep an eye on these front pages as the conflict progresses; they will be the early warning to the Government on where public opinion is on our intervention in Libya.

1 comment:

  1. I am amazed that anyone takes the United Nations seriously nowadays.

    Just 8 short years ago, Libya was elected chairman of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, yet now we have senior members of the UN Council actively seeking regime change in that same country.

    The country's leader has not changed; nor have the effects of his repressive policies upon that country's population.

    ReplyDelete

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