Newspaper - a publication that appears regularly and frequently, and carries news about a wide variety of current events.

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GCSE English –

Media Assignment.

Newspaper: a publication that appears regularly and frequently, and carries news about a wide variety of current events.

“The first printed forerunners of the newspaper appeared in Germany in the late 1400’s in the form of news pamphlets or broadsides, often highly sensationalized in content.” In the English-speaking world, the earliest predecessors of the newspaper were ‘Corantos’, small news pamphlets produced only when some event worthy of notice occurred. The first successively published title was ‘The Weekly News’ of 1622. It was followed in the 1640’s and 1650’s by a plethora of different titles in the similar news book format. The first true newspaper in English was the ‘London Gazette’ of 1666. For a generation it was the only officially sanctioned newspaper, though many periodical titles were in print by the century’s end.

It is generally believed that the purpose of a newspaper is to state the facts about what is going on in the world around us. However, media has long been a way of manipulating the minds of the greater population into holding certain values and opinions. Propaganda is used frequently in everyday life to manipulate our thoughts, and despite what the majority of us think, it does affect our opinions. In general, we believe that what is potrayed as ‘News’ is fact, but often the facts are twisted to support the political views of the Newspaper or the journalist.

In this essay I will explore the way in which this bias is put across to the reader through Newspapers, by comparing two newspapers. The newspapers that I will be comparing are ‘The News Of The World’ and ‘The Guardian’.

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There are two main selections of newspaper, tabloids, like ‘The News Of The World’, and broadsheets, like ‘The Guardian’. Tabloids are the most popular type of newspapers and seem to outsell broadsheets. They are smaller in size, use lots of pictures, are more colourful, and they often rely on “page three girls”, and other such shock tactics, to attract readers. Broadsheets are twice the size of tabloids, more serious, less colourful, and are more detailed and descriptive. I have chosen to compare ‘The News Of The World’ and ‘The Guardian’ simply because one is a tabloid and the other a ...

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