Notes on ownership and regulation

Regulation: The owners of newspapers can influence the editorial stance of a newspaper. Newspapers will also attempt to influence how the public vote in elections. It is important that newspapers stick to a code of conduct or rules set out by independent organisations. 

The Daily Mail is seen as Britain’s most right-wing newspaper. Britain’s most read newspaper is described by 44% of Brits as “very right-wing”, far ahead of any other paper. In total, 81% considered the paper to be right-wing to one degree or another.

At the other end of the spectrum the Guardian is seen as Britain’s most left-wing newspaper, closely followed by the Mirror. Whilst Britons were about equally likely to see both publications as slightly left-of-centre or fairly left-wing, slightly more considered the Guardian to be “very left-wing”, at 16% compared to The Mirror’s 11%.

The Independent was the only newspaper that was seen as broadly centrist, albeit with a leftist bent. Just over a third (37%) of people consider it to sit in the political centre – more than double the rate for any other newspaper – whilst a further 26% said they thought it was slightly left-of-centre.

As for The Times, the majority of people consider the paper to be either slightly right of centre or fairly right-wing (28 per cent in each case), although it is seen as the least right-wing of the right-wing papers.

Relevant information from blog posts

The free press in the UK is particularly important due to government control. If the media are free to write about government, they can report on the performance of government, and the populace can learn information necessary to form opinions about government. Certain stories may get to the public domain that would otherwise not be able to with government censorship and control without the free press, for example the recent story of Priti Patel would have the potential to be covered up, creating a more corrupt government. Media freedom is essentially a limit on government power. If the media aren’t free, then government has a significant power over individuals that it does not need to have. Media freedom allows a range of ideas to be shared and tested. If a given world view is suppressed, it will not be debated. The range of ideas presented in a free media broadens the experience of consumers of media. 

Lack of a free press can lead to a corrupt government and censorship of the media, which is seen in places such as North Korea where Kim Jon-Un dictates and controls the country along with the media.  

This relates to Hesmondhalgh's theory on cultural industries as DMGT (owner of the Daily Mail) also owns multiple other companies as shown above. This therefore shows the integration and conglomeration of cultural industries which follows the normal capitalist patterns seen in Hesmondhalgh's theory.

I believe that ownership should raise concerns in the UK as complete control over media products may lead to censorship of major news and permanent ideologies being passed through constantly rather than a balanced media output. Complete control leads typically to big issues and turns a democracy into a dictatorship, evidentially seen in places such as North Korea (who believe ridiculous things such as leader Kim Jong-un doesn't excreciate due to the censorship in the media). 

From a political side, mass ownership of media and newspapers leads to issues as owners of the media resources push their ideologies through even if it is subconsciously as they ultimately decide what is in their paper. This is reinforced in Curran and Seaton's theory who believe that 'Media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. This leads to a narrowing of the range of opinions represented and a pursuit of profit at the expense of quality or creativity... It is constrained by nationalism and state censorship. News is still controlled by powerful news organisations, who have successfully defended their oligarchy'.

You could apply Shirky's End of audience theory with these online news websites and platforms as the consumers decide what news they want to view based on subscriptions. Behaviour can vary across social media sites as stated in Shirky's theory, for example you may subscribe to a particular newspaper on one social media platform yet when a big news story from a different paper is broadcasted and shared by peers consumers are directed to read that story as opposed to any other as it is available with one click, proving that the consumer becomes decisive and behaviour is less predictable. Arguably this theory may not apply as frequent customers may tailor stories to their preferences and only go to that particular site to get their news, they would therefore have predictable behaviour and multiple people with these preferences may form a mass of audience that can be related to and cared for throughout the paper in the media (for example readers of the Guardian may want more political and factual journalism so may actively seek for the content and the paper can comply with the subscription).