Contributor Leaderboard

Vic, you do right to administer great caution and to take into consideration any political bias when getting your daily dose of ’news’ (I use the last word loosely) but a non-biased news outlet is, I fear, also a non-existent news outlet. The reason for that is that the task of a reporter is not, as one might think, to report news it is to earn money for his/her employer. Ever since William Caxton introduced the printing press to the people of Britain printed news has been a part of the British way of life. In Caxton’s time, however, news reporting was sporadic. It coincided with events as they occurred, and which were deemed worthy of report and comment. The situation today is somewhat different with news being reported on a weekly, daily or even hourly basis, regardless of whether or not anything of importance has happened. The media, digital or otherwise, are committed to filling their columns and air-time with something or other and how that ’’something or other’ is presented is largely down to the intended readership. The BBC does not, of course, ’sell’ it’s news reports neither does it allow advertising – as do it’s many competitors – but it does have it’s viewing figures to think about. Awareness of the social grade of the readership is crucial to the survival of news outlets. In the west they exist within a free market system and if they are not successful commercially they will fail and lose their profit. So, news outlets operating within a free market system are not necessarily going to give us a full account of the news of the day but rather ’selected’ information on recent events, and this information may well be presented with an ideological ‘spin’ which thankfully most of us can recognise. News outlets fall with regard to readership into two main groups, the ‘quality’ press, and the ‘popular’ press, and that’s a division that’s been around since at least 1819 when they were referred to as the ”respectable -” as opposed to the ”pauper” press. Both share a need to condense information to fit the space/time available while, at the same time, retaining clarity and avoiding ambiguity. Both are concerned with presenting a certain number of facts in as interesting manner as possible BUT … to different readerships whose constitution they are very clear about, in particular their social and political standing. The latter fact accounts not only for the use of political bias in news outlets but also for many stylistic and linguistic differences in the two and all are well documented by language researchers. There is an abundance of research showing features of stylistic significance, in both the popular and the quality press, which reflect a certain social grade of readership. Thirty years ago the quality outlets used to give balanced news reports in a neutral language. However, recent research has shown that there are signs that some quality outlets are moving towards a more popular style. This is evident above all in their increased use of a more simple language, noticeably in their choice of words from the lower end the lexical register. - usually reserved for the popular press. Believe me, the popular and the quality press choose their words carefully to create an impression which is attractive to certain types of reader from opposite poles of the social scale and they have at their disposal a whole battalion of linguistic - and even paralinguistic – tools which ensure that their text is tailor-made for just their reader so if anyone isn’t liking what they are reading then they are probably subscribing to the wrong news outlet. Keep reading Vic and keep being aware of the bias in the text. It’s never going to disappear – from ANY news outlet - because this interest in profit is sufficient to ensure that the versatility of the English language will continue to be utilised to make newspapers more attractive to the different social classes for many generations to come.

Reuters, BBC, Associated Press were all reliable and trusted news sources, even Blyth News Ashington post was good (especially to use as a bleezer!) Daily Mirror was just for the crossword. The Newcastle Journal/Evening Chronicle on line was alright but I gave up fighting all of the advertising. Can't beat Facebook for the real facts.....