20th Century - Murdoch

I love watching films, I love the cinema experience and am the kind of person to spend ten pounds on a good 'premiere' seat at the cinema and a further tenner on drink, popcorn and sweets. For the first time I watched the trailers and saw the logo of 20th Century Fox and beneath it I saw, "A News Corporation Company." This caught my attention as I never knew this before or why it was written beneath the logo. This may have been around for years and I simply never noticed but it got me thinking and logging on to Wikipedia.

Running through the paragraphs I noted that, 'News Corporation' was not simply a term but a company name. The company name of a Mr Rupert Murdoch. I was surprised, although I know I should not have been. He seems to own practically everything. News papers, news channels, magazines and now movie companies. In order to buy the company he had to become a US citizen, which he did with no problem. The company is the third in the worlds largest in entertainment as well as third in the worlds largest media conglomerate.

As a journalist I feel this is something that I should have known. The more I find out that Murdoch owns the more I understand why many people dislike him and the argument that one person owning as much as he does is not good for society; but that is for another blog post another time.

Trends in UK National Newspapers Now

When looking at the main trends in UK national newspapers, the first, very important, trend is to discover whether they follow the right or left wings which determines who they follow in government, what views they have and the stories they will follow.

For example, The Daily Telegraph is a right wing newspaper. Which follows and supports the Conservatives, following David Cameron and his policies. During elections, politics and policies will feature heavily. The Telegraph will also make remarks about the opposing party, Labour, headed by Gordon Brown. It is mostly broadsheet newspapers that follow the Conservatives. These newspapers are for serious-minded people, whereas a tabloid newspaper is more for the “working man.”

Tabloids, such as The Daily Mirror and The Daily Star, are far more left wing. They support Labour and Gordon Brown. The trend between the left wing newspapers is that they will support Labour and their policies and criticise the Conservatives. The left wing newspapers are the opposite of the right wing newspapers. They can write two completely different stories, based on the same event. The difference will be their view point and their stance on who has what policies. For example, The Daily Mirror may write positively about Gordon Brown but criticise David Cameron and vice versa with The Daily Telegraph.

However there are a few newspapers that change their stance on politics when one political party is not doing so well and when one is doing very well. An example of this kind of newspaper is The Sun. In 1997 The Sun supported Labour but has now changed its stance to the Conservatives. This happened after Gordon Brown’s speech at the 2009 Labour Party Conference in Brighton. They wrote, “The Sun believes – and prays – that the Conservative leadership can put the great back into Great Britain.”

Depending on the politics of the newspaper, it depends on what trends they will follow writing their articles and their viewpoints. Three different newspapers can have three different opinions or views on the same speech.

Another point that dictates what each newspaper will write about is who owns it and their opinions and views. Rupert Murdoch owns 32 newspapers around the world, nine of which are distributed in the UK, meaning that he controls a very large readership and sets many trends throughout his newspapers.

The main newspapers Murdoch owns are The Times, The Sun and The Sunday Times. Murdoch owns a variation of broadsheet and tabloid newspapers. Most of the newspapers that he owns support the Conservatives which means that the support for the Conservatives is ever growing. Recently The Sun switched to Conservative from Labour.

One man having power over many newspapers also creates trends between national newspapers so that any newspaper is either Labour or Conservative. Normally the company that owns the newspaper imposes their opinion, such as Rupert Murdoch. However Rupert Murdoch owns a very large portion of the national newspapers and thus making his newspapers’ trends the most followed and used trends of now.
Sources –

Quoted:

The Sun
www.wikipedia.com
Rupert Murdoch
Left and Right Wing newspapers
The Sun
The Daily Mail
The Times

Not Quoted, background knowledge:

www.world-newspapers.com
The Times
http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=516244
http://www.woopidoo.com/biography/rupert-murdoch.htm