Sofija Gubāne ITA2
Paper on British Studies
Ventspils Augstskola
1999
Table of contents:
Introduction
……………………………………………………..3
History
…………………………………………………………..3
National
papers…………………………………………………..4
Two
types of national papers…………………………………….4
Sunday
press……………………………………………………..5
Politics…………………………………………………………...5
Scandal…………………………………………………………...7
Weekly
and periodical press……………………………………..7
Local
and regional press………………………………………....8
Freedom
of the press……………………………………………..9
Conclusion
……………………………………………………..10
Introduction.
Despite the
development of motion pictures early in 20th century, of radio
broadcasting in the 1920s, and of television in the 1940s, newspapers remain a
major source of information on matters ranging from details of important news
events to human-interest stories. British people are reported to be the worlds
most dedicated home-video users. But this does not mean that they have given up
reading. The British buy more newspapers than any other people except the
Swedes and Japanese. Nearly 80% of all households buy a copy of one of the main
national papers every day.
History.
The first continuously published English newspaper
was the Weekly News (1622-41). The
earliest newspapers in England printed mostly foreign news, but in 1628 the
first papers giving domestic news were begun by clerks who reported the debates
of the English Parliament. These papers were called diurnals.
The earliest periodical was Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (1665). Periodicals were essentially
collections of summaries (later essays) on developments in art, literature,
philosophy, and science. The most famous of the essay periodicals of the 18th
century were, perhaps, The Tatler (1709-11)
and The Spectator (1711-12, 1714),
the creations of the renowned essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison;
and The Rambler (1750-52) and The Idler (1758-60), founded by Samuel
Johnson. The first periodicals of the modern general type, devoted to a
miscellany of reading entertainment was
The Gentleman’s Magazine (1731-1907)- the first instance of the use of the
word magazine to denote a vehicle of
entertaining reading. It contained reports of political debates, essays, stories,
and poems and was widely influential.
But the
English newspaper did not become a mass medium until reduction on the tax on
newsprint in 1836 lowered its cost within reach of the average man. By 1854 the
annual circulation had risen from 39 million to122 million; and when, in 1861,
this “tax on knowledge” was repealed, additional impetus was given to
circulation.
Monthly or quarterly reviews, usually partisan in
politics, and with articles contributed by eminent authors and politicians,
were introduced in Great Britain early in the 19th century. Of
these, two become outstanding. The
Edinburgh review (1802-1929), founded in support of the Whig party, was one
of the most influential critical journals of its day, numbering among its
contributors the English writers Sir Walter Scott, Thomas Carlyle, Matthew
Arnold, and William Hazlitt. Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine (1817), a Tory publication, was early in its career
noted for satirical commentaries on Scottish affairs and serialisation of
Scottish fiction.
Popular weeklies and monthlies, some illustrated and
selling for only a few pennies each, made their appearance in Britain in second
quarter of the 19th century; among them were The Mirror (1822-49), a two-penny illustrated magazine, and the Cornhill Magazine (1860-1939). The Cornhill, first edited by the English
novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, was the first six-penny monthly to
publish fiction regularly in serial form; these serials included novels by the
editor and such contemporaries as Elizabeth Gaskell and Anthony Trollope.
The first modern illustrated magazines appeared
during the middle and later part of the 19th century. The more
successful included the weekly Illustrated
London News (1842), important for its coverage, over more than a century,
of significant events.
By the end of the 19th century, however,
photography and the development of halftone illustration replaced artists’
renderings.
Other important British periodicals of the second
half of the 19th century include the Fortnightly Review (1865-1954;issued monthly after 1866) and the
weekly humour magazine Punch (1841).
During the 19th century improvements in
techniques of illustration and printing resulted in lower production costs and
introduced a new era of mass circulation. Increasingly, also, magazine
publishers relied on revenue from the advertising their publications carried.
The number, variety, and readership of attractively designed periodicals grew
enormously.
National Papers.
There are more than eighty local
and regional daily papers; but the total circulation of all of them together is
much less than the combined circulation of the national ‘dailies’. The only
non-national papers with significant circulation are published in the evenings,
when they do not compete with the national papers, which always appear in the
morning. The dominance of the national press reflects the weakness of regional
identity among English.
Most local papers do not appear on
Sundays, so on that day the dominance of the national press is absolute. The
‘Sunday papers’ are so- called because that is the only day on which they
appear. Some of them are sisters of a daily (published by the same company) but
employing separate editors and journalists.
The morning newspaper is a British
household institution; such an important one that, until the laws were relaxed
in the early 1990s, newsagents were the only shops that were allowed to open on
Sundays. People could not be expected to do without their newspapers for even
one-day, especially a day when there was more free time to read them. The
Sunday papers sell slightly more copies than the national dailies and are
thicker. Some of them have six or more sections making up a total of well over
200 pages.
Another indicator of the
importance of ‘the papers’ is the morning ‘paper round’. Most newsagents
organise these to, and more than half of the country’s readers get their
morning paper delivered to their door by a teenager who gets up at around
half-past five every day in order to earn a bit of extra pocket money.
The
two types of national newspaper.
The daily press differs in two
obvious ways from that of any similar Western European country. First, all over
Britain most people read ‘national’ papers, based in London, which altogether
sell more copies than all the eighty- odd provincial papers combined. Second,
there is a striking difference between the five ‘quality’ papers and the six
mass- circulation popular ‘tabloids’.
The ‘quality papers’, or ‘broadsheets’, cater for the better educated
readers. The ‘popular papers’, or ‘tabloids’, sell to a much larger readership.
They contain far less print than the broadsheets and far more pictures. They
use larger headlines and write in a simpler style of English. While the
broadsheets devote much space to politics and other ‘serious’ news, the
tabloids concentrate on ‘human interest’ stories, which often means sex and
scandal.
However, the
broadsheets do not completely ignore sex and scandal or any other aspects of
public life both types of paper devote equal amounts of attention to sport. The
difference between them is in the treatment of the topics they cover, and in
which topics are given the most prominence. For example, compare headlines of
newspapers for one date (25 march 1993) The
Sun “I’ VE MESSED UP MY LIFE”,
The Daily Express “MINISTER URGES
SCHOOL CONDOMS” and The Times “ South Africa had nuclear bombs, admits
de Klerk”, The Guardian “Serb
shelling halts an airlift”
The reason that the quality
newspapers are called broadsheets and the popular ones tabloids is because they
are different in shapes. The broadsheets are twice as large as the tabloids. A
word tabloid was first used for pharmaceutical substances compressed into
pills. The tabloids compress the news, and are printed on small sheets of
paper. “It is a mystery why, in Britain, reading intelligent papers should need
highly-developed skills of paper-folding. But it certainly seems to be the
rule.” (James O’Driscoll “Britain”,
1997)
Sunday press
These
characteristics are still more salient with the Sunday press. Almost no papers
at all are published in Britain on Sundays except ‘national’ ones: six
‘popular’ and five ‘quality’ based in London. Three appears on Sunday only; the
others are associated with dailies, which have the same names but different editors,
journalists and layouts. The ‘quality’ Sunday papers devote large sections to
literature and the arts. They have colour supplements and are in many ways more
like magazines than newspapers. They supply quite different worlds of taste and
interest from ‘popular’ papers. In 1989 a new paper was published the Sunday Correspondent, advertising itself
as the country’s first ‘quality tabloid’. It is closed after one year.
Politics.
The way
politics is presented in the national newspapers reflects the fact that British
political parties are essentially parliamentary organisations. Although
different papers have differing political outlooks, none of the large
newspapers is an organ of a political party. Many are often obviously against
the policies of this or that party, but none of them would ever use ‘we’ or
‘us’ to refer to a certain party.
However, each
paper has an idea of what kind of reader it is appealing to and fairly
predictable political outlook. Of the five quality morning papers only The Daily Telegraph is solidly
Conservative; nearly all its readers are Conservatives. The Times and Financial Times
have a big minority of non- Conservative readers. The Guardian belongs to the left wing and The Independent holds to the centre. Of the popular papers only the
Daily Mirror regularly supports
Labour. The Daily Mail, The Daily
Express, The Star and especially The
Sun represent the right. The right seems to be heavily over-represented,
not because such a large majority of British people holds right-wing views. It
is partly because the press tends to be owned by conservative party supporters.
Plenty of Labour voters read popular papers with Conservative inclinations, but
do not change their political opinions because of what they have read. Some of
them are interested only in the human interest stories and in sport, and may
well hardly notice the reporting of political and economic affairs.
What counts for
the newspaper publishers is business. All of them are in the business first and
foremost to make money. They primary concern is to sell as many copies as
possible and to attract as much advertising as possible. They normally put
selling copies ahead of political integrity. A good example is change of The Sun’s Scottish edition’s attitude in
early 1991. It had previously vigorously opposed any idea of Scottish
independence or home rule; but when it saw the opinion polls in early 1991, it
decided to change its mind completely.
Most of the
newspapers are owned by big companies, some of which have vast interests in
other things, ranging from travel agencies to Canadian forests. Some have been
dominated by strong individuals. The greatest of the press ‘barons’ have not
been British in origin, but have come to Britain from Canada, Australia or
Czechoslovakia. The most influential innovator of modern times is partly
Indian, and spent his early years in India. He pioneered the introduction of
new technology in printing. By now the press in general has replaced expensive
old printing methods by new processes which make it possible to operate
economically. But it took years of strikes; disrupted production and some
violent confrontations before the changes were introduced.
Among ‘quality’
papers the strongly Conservative Daily
Telegraph sells more than twice as many copies as any of the others. It
costs less to buy and its reporting of events very thorough. The Financial Times has a narrower appeal,
but is not narrowly restricted to business news. The Guardian has an old liberal tradition, and is in general a
paper of the Left.
The most famous
of all British newspapers is The Times.
It is not now, and has never been, an organ of the government, and has no link
with any party. In 1981 it and The Sunday
Times were taken over by the international press company of the Australian
Rupert Murdoch, which also owns two of the most ‘popular’ of the notional
papers. Its editorial independence is protected by a supervisory body, but in
the 1980’s it has on the whole been sympathetic to the Conservative government.
The published letters to the editor have often been influential, and some lead
to prolonged discussion in further letters. Under the Murdoch regime it has
continued a movement away from its old austerity.
Since 1986 The Times has had a serious new rival,
of similar quality and character: The
Independent. It has achieved a circulation not much smaller than that of The Times- and greater than The Times’ circulation a few years ago.
The two
archetypal popular papers, the Daily Mail
and Daily Express, were both built up
by individual tycoons in the early twentieth century. Both had a feeling for
the taste of a newly literate public: if a man bites a dog, that’s news. The Daily Express was built up by a man born
in Canada. He became a great man in the land, a close friend and associate of
Winston Churchill, and a powerful minister in his War Cabinet. The circulation
of the Daily Express at one time
exceeded four million copies a day. Now the first Lord Beaverbrool is dead, and
the daily sales are not much more than half of their highest figure. The
history of the Daily Mail, with its
more conventional conservatism, is not greatly different.
In popular
journalism the Daily Mirror became a
serious rival of the Express and Mail in the 1940’s. It was always
tabloid, and always devoted more space to pictures than to text. It was also a
pioneer with strip cartoons. During the Second world War it was the
Government’s fiercest and most effective critic, and at one time Churchill was
tempted to use the Government’s special wartime powers to suppress it, but he
left it free. After 1945 it regularly supported the Labour Party. It soon
outdid the Daily Express in size of
headlines, short sentences and exploitation of excitement. It also became the
biggest- selling daily newspaper. For many years its sales were above four
million; sometimes well above.
Until the
1960’s the old Daily Herald was an
important daily paper reflecting the views of the trade unions and the Labour
Party. Then it went through several changes, until in the 1970’s its successor,
The Sun, was taken over by Mr
Murdoch’s company in its new tabloid form it became a right- wing rival to the Daily Mirror, with huge headlines and
some nudity. In the 1980’s its sales reached four million and exceeded the Daily Mirror’s. Mr Murdoch’s News
International already owned The News of
the World, a Sunday paper that has continued to give special emphasis to
scandals. But by 1990’s its sales were only two- thirds of their former highest
figure of eight million.
Scandal.
The other
feature of the national press that is partially the result of the commercial
interests of its owners is its shallowness. Few other European countries have a
popular press, which is so ‘low’. Some of the tabloids have almost given up
even pretence of dealing with serious materials. Apart from sport, their pages
are full of little except stories about private lives of famous people.
Sometimes their ‘stories’ are not articles at all, they are just excuses to
show pictures of almost naked women. During the 1980s, page three of the Sun became infamous in this respect and
the women who posed for its photographs became known as ‘page three girls’.
The desire to
attract more readers at all costs has meant that, in the late twentieth
century, even the broadsheets in Britain can look rather ‘popular’ when
compared to equivalent ‘quality’ papers in some other countries. They are still
serious newspapers containing high-quality articles whose presentation of
factual information is usually reliable. But even they now give a lot of coverage
to news with a ‘human interest’ angle when they have the opportunity.
The Weekly and Periodical Press.
Good English
writing is often to be found in the weekly political and literary journals, all
based in London, all with nation-wide circulations in the tens of thousands. The Economist, founded in 1841, probably
has no equal anywhere. It has a coloured cover and a few photographs inside, so
that it looks like Times and Newsweek, Der Spiegel and l’Express, but its reports have more
depth and breadth than any of these. It covers world affairs, and even its
American section is more informative about America than its American
equivalents. Although by no means ‘popular’, it is vigorous in its comments,
and deserves the respect in which it is generally held. It is fairly obviously
right-wing in its views, but the writing is of very high quality and that is
why it has the reputation of being one of the best weeklies in the world.
The New
Statesman and Spectator are
weekly journals of opinion, one left, one right. They regularly contain well-
written articles, often politically slanted. Both devote nearly half their
space to literature and the arts. The New
Statesman absorbed New Society in
1988.
The Times has three weekly ‘Supplements’, all published and sold separately.
The Literary Supplement is devoted
almost entirely to book reviews, and covers al kinds of new literature. It
makes good use of academic contributors, and has at last, unlike The Economist, abandoned its old
tradition of anonymous reviews. The Times
Educational and Higher Educational Supplement are obviously specialist, and
useful sources for any serious student of these fields of interests. New Scientist, published by the company,
which owns the Daily Mirror, has good
and serious articles about scientific research, often written by academics yet
useful for the general reader.
One old British
institution, the satirical weekly Punch,
survives, more abrasive than in an earlier generation yet finding it hard to
keep the place it once had in more secure social system.
Its attraction,
particularly for the intellectual youth, has been surpassed by its rival, Private Eye, founded in 1962 by people
who, not long before, had run a pupils’ magazine in Shrewsbury School. It is
satirical magazine, which makes fun of all parties and politicians, and also
makes fun of the mainstream press. It specialises in political scandal and, as
a result, is forever defending itself in legal actions. It is so outrageous
that some chains of newsagents sometimes refuse to sell it. Its scandalous
material is admirably written on atrocious paper and its circulation rivals
that of The Economist.
The country’s
best-selling magazine is the Radio Times,
which, as well as listing al the television and radio programmes for the coming
week, contains some fifty pages of articles. (Note the typical British appeal
to continuity in the name ‘Radio Times’. The magazine was first published
before television existed and has never bothered to update its title).
Glossy weekly
or monthly illustrated magazines cater either for women or for any of a
thousand special interests. Almost all are based in London, with national
circulations, and the women’s magazines sell millions of copies. These, along
with commercial television, are the great educators of demand for the new and
better goods offered by the modern consumer society. In any big newsagent’s
shop the long rows of brightly covered magazines seems to go on forever; beyond
the large variety of appeals to women and teenage girls come those concerned
with yachting, tennis, model railways, gardening and cars. For every activity
there is a magazine, supported mainly by its advertisers, and from time to time
the police bring a pile of pornographic magazines to local magistrates, who
have the difficult task of deciding whether they are sufficiently offensive to
be banned.
These
specialist magazines are not cheap. They live off an infinite variety of taste,
curiosity and interest. Their production, week by week and month by month,
represents a fabulous amount of effort and of felled trees. Television has not
killed the desire to read.
Local and Regional Papers.
Most of the significant regional newspapers
are ‘evening’ papers, each publishing about 4 editions between about midday and
5 p.m. London like every other important town has one. All these ‘evening’
papers are semi- popular, but none has a circulation approaching that of any
popular national paper.
Except in
central London there are very few newspaper kiosks in town streets. This may be
because most pavements are too narrow to have room for them. In towns the local
evening papers are sold by elderly people who stand for many hours, stamping
their feet to keep warm. Otherwise newspapers can be bought in shops or
delivered to homes by boys and girls who want to earn money.
Local morning
papers have suffered from the universal penetration of the London- based
national press. Less than twenty survive in the whole of England and their
combined circulation is much less than that of The Sun alone. Among local daily papers those published in the
evenings are much more important. Each of about seventy towns has one, selling
only within a radius of 50 to 100 kilometres. The two London evening papers,
the News and Standard, together sold two million copies in 1980, but they could
not both survive, and merged into one, now called The London Evening Standard.
Most local
daily papers belong to one or other of the big press empires, which leave their
local editors to decide editorial policy. Mostly the try to avoid any
appearance of regular partisanship, giving equal weight to each major political
party. They give heavy weight to local news and defend local interests and
local industries.
The total
circulation of all the provincial daily papers, morning and evening together,
is around eight million: about half as great as that of the national papers. In
spite of this, some provincial papers are quite prosperous. They do not need
their own foreign correspondents; they receive massive local advertising,
particularly about things for sale. The truly local papers are weekly. They are
not taken very seriously, being mostly bought for the useful information
contained in their adverts. But for a foreign visitor wishing to learn
something of the flavour of a local community, the weekly local paper can be
useful. Some of these papers are now given away, not sold but supported by the
advertising.
There is an
exception to the dominance of the national press throughout Britain. This is in
Scotland. It has two important ‘quality’ papers, The Scotsman in Edinburgh and the Glasgow Herald. The Glasgow Daily
Record and Dundee Courier and
Advertiser survive as ‘popular’ papers. On Sundays the Sunday Post, of Dundee, claims to be read by four- fifth of the
Scottish population, it sells well over million copies. Scotland’s cultural
distinctness is reflected in its press.
The welsh press
includes several daily papers as well as a number of weekly English-language,
bilingual, or welsh-language newspapers.
Northern Ireland’s daily papers
are all published in Belfast.
Freedom of the press.
The British
press is controlled by a rather small number of extremely large multinational
companies. This fact helps to explain two notable features. One of these is its
freedom from interference from government influence. The press is so powerful
in this respect that it is sometimes referred to as ‘the forth estate’ (the
other three being the Commons, the Lords and the monarch). This freedom is
ensured because there is a general feeling in the country that ‘freedom of
speech’, is a basic constitutional right. A striking example of the importance
of freedom of speech occurred during the Second World War. During this time,
the country had a coalition government of Conservative and Labour politicians,
so that there was really no opposition in Parliament at all. At one time, the
cabinet wanted to use special wartime regulation to temporarily ban the Daily Mirror, which had been
consistently critical of the government. The Labour party, which until then had
been completely loyal to the government, immediately demanded a debate on the
matter, and the other national papers, although they disagreed with the
opinions of the Mirror, all leapt to
its defence and opposed the ban. The government was forced to back down and the
Mirror continued to appear throughout
the war.
For a very long time the press has been free
from any governmental interference. There has been no
censorship, no subsidy. But the emphasis on revealing the details of people’s
private lives has led to discussion about the possible need to restrict the
freedom of the press. This is because, in behaving this way, the press has
found itself in conflict with another British principle, which is strongly felt
as that freedom of speech-, the right to privacy. Many journalists now appear
to spend their time trying to discover the most sensational secrets of
well-known personalities, or even of ordinary people who, by chance, find
themselves connected with some newsworthy situations. There is a widespread
feeling that, in doing so, they behave too intrusively.
In 1953 the organisations of the press
themselves created a body called the Press Council whose main task were to
defend the freedom of the press and to give its opinions about complaints. Its
edicts often criticised the behaviour of some newspapers and their journalists,
but were treated with indifference. In 1990 the government asked a committee to
examine the situation, and its report concluded that the Press Council had been
ineffectual. The organisations of the press appointed a working party of
editors to draw up a published code of practice, and a new Press Complaints
Commission to enforce it. This organisation is made up of newspaper editors and
journalists. It follows a Code of practice, which sets limits on the extent to
which newspapers should publish details of people’s private lives. Journalists
should not try to obtain information by subterfuge, intimidation or harassment,
or photograph individuals without their consent. However, against the right to
privacy the press has successfully opposed the concept of the public’s ‘right
to know’.
Of course,
Britain is not the only country where large companies with the same single aim
of making profits control the press. ”So why is the British press so frivolous?
The answer may lie in the function of the British press for its readers.
British adults never read comics. Only children read these publications which
consist entirely of picture stories. It would be embarrassing for an adult to
be seen reading one. Adults, who want to read something very simple, with
plenty of pictures to help them, have almost nowhere to go but the national
press. Most people don’t use newspapers for ‘serious’ news. For this, they turn
to another source- broadcasting.” (James O’Driscoll “Britain”, 1997)
Conclusion.
Despite the
great concurrence from television British press is still alive. It has a
remarkable history and some of today’s journalists are trying to keep this
traditions. British press is considered to be the freest in the world, and
tries to somehow rule itself in order not to be ruled by government. I think
British press has future.
References:
Bromhead, Peter. Life
in Modern Britain. Longman Group UK Ltd. 1991.
O’Driscoll, James. Britain.
The Country and its People: an Introduction for Learners of English. Oxford
University Press. 1995.
Collier’s
Encyclopedia with Bibliography and Index. Volume 17 Macmillan Educational corporation.1974
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