"Discuss the view that news is produced and manufactured as popular entertainment."

Almost anything can be news; it depends on whether it can be manipulated into an interesting story for the particular target audience.

        The presentation of a news story all determined the fact that it is produced for entertainment. At this point in the manufacture detailed design and layout are discussed and all of the staff of each department are brought together. Then the final print and photographic layouts are adjusted and negotiated and the style of the paper is fine-tuned. Both tabloids and broadsheets have there own ways of doing this.

        I have chosen several copies of the Daily Mirror as an example of a tabloid to show the entertainment side and The Guardian as an example of a broadsheet to show real news. Just at a glance at the front pages, The Guardian looks double the height of The Mirror. The Mirror is a lot more colourful and the news titles are bold and large. Often a pun is used to grab the reader’s attention, usually one that is mildly humorous, and lead then into the newspaper for the rest of the story. An example of this is in the Mirror (October 10th). The story was about cabinet ministers refusing to reveal if they smoked dope. The pun was, “Grass up the cabinet”.

The guardian id quite the opposite to the Mirror. The front page is very dull and the titles are smaller. The majority of the story or the story itself was on the front page. The print is smaller and the layout looked very formal. Probably written for the upper class person. The majority of the pictures are in black and white.

Both types of papers are for different audiences and for different aims just by looking at the style of the layout.

        What appeals interest to the reader is the way in which the text speaks to them. The humour and lightness of the Mirror conveys entertainment. Also the way the pictures are presented are influential. In the October 6th edition of the Mirror the whole front page is committed to the story on Slobodan Milosevic. The story is about how he has been kicked out as leader of the Serbs after thirteen years of “hell”. The story carries on to pages 4 and 5. The main picture on the front takes up nearly the whole page. It is of protesters outside Belgrade’s Parliament; the angle of the photo is from a protesters point of view with a large fist held up high in the middle of the picture. The large title is, “get out you slob”. This story proves that news is bias. Usually it is only on stories like this one which include politics and elite nations and leaders. This is always bias on the side of the reader, there point of view or the point of view they want you to look at.

In broadsheet papers there is no need for news to be portrayed as entertainment. This is just ‘real news’. As an example the same story as I described earlier about Slobodan Milosevic is on the front page of the Guardian. It consists of a serious title, which is an overview of the story. No snappy pun, just, “Milosevic eronies defy Serbia’s new ruler”. There is no picture either, instead plain, small font, tightly packed text. It follows on to page 2 with exactly the same layout.

        News is twisted and made bias for entertainment use. There is an extreme amount of pressure to “sell” a story these days. This is why they need to be exaggerated. The tabloids do this very well and this is why such papers as the Sun and Daily Mirror are very successful. On the other hand the broadsheets don’t need to do this because they make their money out of advertisements. But, today there is beginning to be less and less of ‘real news’ because of competition.

Therefore I think news is produced and manufactured as popular entertainment. Mainly to interest readers in buying their stories.

Bibliography

“Advanced Level Media”.   By Hodder and Stoughton.

“Making the News”.  Glasgow Media Group.

“The Daily Mirror”. Edition – October 6th and 10th.

“The Guardian”. Edition – October 12th.