News Q3

 Q3. Explain how the political context in which newspapers are produced, influences their ownership and regulation. Refer to the Guardian and Daily Mail newspapers to support your answer [10 marks]

The political context in which newspapers are produced influences their ownership. This can be shown through our ownership structure of U.K newspapers, which shows a concentrated market with an Oligopoly, emphasising how much of a free market it really is, and the limited opinions readers are faced with due to the concentrated market, of DMGT, Reach and News UK.

The Daily Mail have a sole trader ownership model which is by a British successful Business man, Viscount Rothermere, which enforces personal ownership of the paper. As well as this, the owner and the editor have a good relationship meaning that Rothermere influences the paper's ideas and content, disposable to the target reader. The Daily Mail make a profit through circulation of sales by creating sensationalist stories that the reader would be interested in. The Guardian on the other hand, are owned by a non-for-profit organisation, The Scott's Trust, which profits are out back in the paper to meet the Trusts goal of quality over profit, enforcing the Guardians editorial independence and quality journalism.

The political leaning of a newspaper can strongly influence its news values. The Leveson enquiry suggests that the ownership of a paper is highly linked with its political influences and affilations, and readers will usually follow a paper due to its political alliance. 

From a Daily Mail paper we looked at in early December, The Daily Mail has been seen as leaning away from Boris Johnson through his efforts taking against the second national lockdown and the Conservative party values, which it has historically supported since its establishment. This can be shown through its headline Vaccine Cheers, but first the Tiers" emphasising its critical view of the PM's actions taken with its tier hierarchy in the second national lockdown. On the same Day, the Guardians approach to the article was slightly different, with praising the vaccine with the central image being a female professor from the establishment of the vaccine, deliberately showing the left wing values it stands by.

The regulation of the press has become increasingly important within the newspaper market and the government. Newspapers were previously regulated by PCC, however the Leveson Enquiry meant that IPSO has become the new independent regulator for the U.K newspapers and magazines. IPSO aim to protect consumers but interest them at the same time, with contradicts its ability of being successful.

IPSO take up to 6 weeks to regulate a paper, which usually ends in the paper apologizing and moving on straight after since its forgotten about, Like the Daily Mail who use an apology and continue to sell mass papers with the same values and ideas to gain a profit,and therefore it can be argued that the regulation of newspapers doesn't impact its production.

Overall, the political context of newspapers is press freedom and how to sell more copies, which is especially convenient for the Daily Mail because of their oligopoly structure, it allows them to publish more and more to make a profit, same for advertising. This can be seen through its soft news and dramatic stories of gossip etc both online and in print. Compared with The Guardian, their success is more based on quality  rather than profit, so they publish in depth, quality stories both online and in print. With the decline in print papers, newspapers tend to publish a lot online which is much harder to regulate.