Newspapers: The Times - Representation and Industries

The second part of our case study for The Times focuses on Representation and Industries.

Thursday's lesson video for The Times - Industries is here:

Your Tuesday 19 January lesson video for The Times - Representation is here:

Notes from the lessons

Here are your two CSP pages for The Times (paper copies have been sent home to you):

 

 

The Times: Representation and Industry notes

The Times: Representation

Front page

Some key aspects of the representation on the front page:

• Slogan ‘Britain’s most trusted newspaper’ represents the British press as traditional and authentic / trustworthy. Expected to uphold British values. 
• By using the crest, the newspaper is associating itself with being British and part of an established heritage and tradition.
• Values tradition (the caption talks about the ‘remembrance poppy’ worn by the Duchess. Focus is on patriotic values, respect for armed services and her title as a member of aristocracy.  
• Views education as important and represents fee paying schools (private schools) in a positive light. More elitist.
• Story about potentially criminal government leak is angled to defend the government and contains multiple denials of any wrongdoing. This supports the government and creates a representation of the Conservative Party as being law-abiding and open to scrutiny. This reinforces the fact that the Times usually supports the Conservative Party in British politics.

Inside page

Some key aspects of the representation on the inside page:

• Focus on future King of England and his wife/family and role in international diplomacy (similar to The Mirror but more positive, less gossip)
• Positive focus on Conservative Royal family and the traditions they espouse: church services, prayers and military tributes, formal parades. 
• Focus on the traditions behind the celebration more than the relationships between them: ‘Royal Anzac Day’.
• Story about Henry VIII: history and facts. More traditional view of Royal Family (linking present day to Tudor ancestors.)
• Sri Lanka tourists: warning British tourists about foreign terror attacks. More of a Right-Wing viewpoint and suggests readers have money for exotic holidays. Also a more right-wing negative view of minorities as ‘other’ and potential threat
• Easter Sunday bombings: threat of Islamist extremism in Sri Lanka and infiltrating Britain: ‘Extremist preacher encouraged students…’ Fear of minority religions and ethnic groups. 

Politics

The Times supports the Conservative Party and is against the leftwing Labour Party. Generally, the newspaper will act as a voice for the establishment (the wealthy and powerful) and will not support anything that threatens major changes to the status quo. This can be found in the two main news stories on the front page of the CSP edition of the Times.

Reminder: News values

Media theorists Galtung and Ruge defined a set of news values to explain how journalists and editors decided that certain stories and photographs were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not. The following list is adapted from their work:

• Immediacy: has it happened recently?
• Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain?
• Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
• Frequency: does the event happen fairly regularly?
• Unambiguity: is it clear and definite? 
• Predictability: did we expect it to happen?
• Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event?
• Continuity: has this story already been defined as news?
• Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?
• Negativity: Is it bad news? Bad news tends to get more focus as it’s more sensational/ attention grabbing. 
• Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death.

The selection of particular news stories, images and text can create very different representations - as we can see in the same Royal Family story across the Daily Mirror and the Times.

The Times: Industries

The Times is owned by News UK (a subsidiary of News Corporation). News Corporation is a conglomerate mostly owned by Rupert Murdoch, an Australian media mogul with many business interests worldwide such as the Fox network in the USA.  

In July 2009 News Corporation had to pay large sums of compensation for the phone hacking scandal, where their journalists were accused of using illegal methods to obtain information.  

The Times circulation in 2019 was 376,000, down 12% in a year and much lower than the high point of over 800,000 in the 1990s. Since 2020, The Sun and The Times have not published their circulation figures, perhaps to prevent knowledge of how many readers they have lost.

In response to the decline in print newspapers, the Times has:

• Moved towards a multi-platform landscape. This means that it publishes and synchronises across its print, desktop and mobile platforms. Some newspapers (e.g. The Times) have a paywall on their online content. The Times has had a hard paywall since 2010, but it often experiments with making content available for free. Last summer, it began free registrations and has been adding around 30,000 a week.
• Created a social media strategy in collaboration with the digital team to drive growth of their Twitter and Facebook profiles. 
• In 2018, Times and Sunday Times hit 500,000 subscribers as digital outnumbered print for first time at an initial cost of £1 per week for a digital subscription.

Key question: Why have print newspapers declined?

ACCESSIBILITY / DIGITAL AGE: The growth of the Internet as a major source of news (since the 1990s). This has particularly impacted on advertising revenue for newspapers as we use the Internet (often free) for services. Television news is also available 24 hours a day so no need to make ‘appointment to view’ or buy a daily newspaper as updates on-line are more up to date.

COST: People are accessing news freely through social media and other online outlets.  Newspapers cannot compete with the speed and cost-free nature of this.  Twitter has no printing costs, printing factories, distribution costs and journalist wages.

CHOICE & VARIETY: Previously we would go to small number of outlets for our news (BBC and other national broadcasters, national and some local newspapers).  Now there are so many places we can access news (numerous TV channels, websites, social media accounts, blogs). 

IMMEDIACY: Critics of the newspaper as a medium also argue that newspapers haven’t moved with the times. The technology revolution has meant that readers accustomed to waiting for a daily newspaper can now receive up-to-the-minute updates from Web portals, bloggers and new services such as Twitter.

Newspaper regulation

How and why are UK newspapers regulated? The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines. The PCC closed on Monday 8 September 2014 after criticism following the phone hacking affair. 

It was replaced by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).

The role of IPSO is to:

• Regulate 1500 print and 1100 online titles.
• Listen to complaints about press behaviour.
• Help with unwanted press attention.
• Advise publication editors .
• Provide information to the public.
• Provide a journalist whistleblowing hotline.

There is currently a heated debate in the media regarding whether the newspaper industry requires stronger regulation. Some people argue that the newspaper industry cannot be trusted to regulate itself using IPSO and that stronger, statutory regulation should be introduced instead. This would also implement the recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry which followed the phone-hacking scandal. There are links in the extension tasks below if you would like to read more about the newspaper regulation debate.

Blog tasks: The Times case study

Create a blogpost called 'The Times - Representation and Industries' and then work through the following questions:

Representation

1) What representation of private schools can be found on the main front page story of the Times?

2) What representation of the Conservative Party can be found in the story at the top of the front page 'Calls for criminal enquiry as top ministers deny security leak'?

3) How are the Royal Family represented in the Times? (See front page 'Fitting tribute' - Duchess of Cambridge picture and the inside page 'Royal Anzac Day on both sides of the world'). 

4) How does the coverage of the Royal Family in the Times contrast with the reporting of the same events in the Daily Mirror?

5) How are British people and Muslims represented in the article and sidebar 'Sri Lanka tourists warned of more terror'?


Industries

1) Who owns the Times? Write the name of the company AND the billionaire who owns the company.

2) What was the The Times's circulation in 2019? How many papers did the Times used to sell back in the 1990s?

3) How has the Times reacted to the decline in print sales and the growth of the internet?

4) What does IPSO stand for and what is IPSO's job?

5) Why do some people want stronger regulation of British newspapers? 


Grade 8/9 extension tasks

Key question: How does the coverage of the Royal Family in the Times reinforce British social and cultural values? 

Read this Guardian column on IPSO, the press regulator. Why does Polly Toynbee suggest IPSO has been a "total failure"?

Read this short Press Gazette feature on the Times's paywall. Why does the Times head of digital describe the paywall as a success? 

You may also want to watch this video from another Media teacher explaining The Times and the Daily Mirror for A Level students:



Due date: on Google Classroom