Language in the news.

As readers of newspapers, and of television, we readily assume that the Nine O’clock news of the front page of the Daily Express the Guardian, consists of faithfully reports of events that happened out there in the world beyond our immediate experience. At a certain level that is of course a realistic assumption real events do occur and reported – a coach crashes on the Autobahn, a postman wins the pools, a cabinet minister resigns. But real events are subject to conventional processes of selection: they are not intrinsically news worthy, but only become ‘news’ when selected for inclusion in news reports. The vast majority of events are not mentioned, and so selection immediately gives us a partial view of world. We know also that different newspapers report differently, in both content and presentation.

The pools win is more likely to reported in the Mirror than in The Times; whereas a crop failure in Meghalaya may be reported in The Times but almost certainly not in The Mirror. Selection is accompanied by transformation, differential treatment in presentation according to numerous political, social and economic factors. As far as differences in presentation are concerned, most people would admit the possibility of ‘bias’: the Sun is known to be consistently hostile in its treatment of trade unions, and of what it calls ‘the loony Left’; the Guardian is generous in its reporting of the affairs of the Campaigns for Nuclear Disarmament. Such disaffections and affiliations are obvious when you start reading carefully, and discussing the news media with other people. The world of the Press is not the real world, but a world skewed and judged.

Now what attitude might one take towards the ‘bias’? There is an argument to the effect that biases do exit, but not everywhere. The Daily Express is biased, the Socialist Worker is not. In a good world, all newspapers and television channels would report the unmediated truth. This view, seems to me to be drastically and dangerously false. It allows a person to believe, and to assert that their newspaper is unbiased, whereas all the others are in the pockets of the Tories or the Trotskyites; or that newspapers are biased, while TV news is not. The danger with this position is that it assumes the possibility of genuine neutrality, of some news medium being a clear undistorting window, and that can never be.

Match the expressions with their meanings and complete the sentences below.

1. As Kim’s manager, I obviously … in seeing that her new record gets a lot of good publicity.
2. I am tired of reading these sex scandals involving ministers that consistently seem to appear in … .
3. I had tentatively agreed to sharing my office with Jonathan, but I’m having … about it now, and would like to keep it for myself.
4. I had to point out … to Sophie; she was upset by what I said but, as a friend, I could not let her behave so selfishly without saying anything.
5. There was a lot of sympathy for the manager after he was sacked so unfairly: most people thought that he had got … .
6. It’s no use asking university professors to solve the problem of football violence – they all live in their … and don’t know what is happening in real world.
7. I agreed that your mother could stay for a couple of weeks, but I’m afraid that having her here on a permanent basis is … .
8. The village now has a golf course, there’s a car park and it’s full of tourist shops; all in all, it’s … the sleepy little hamlets that I knew thirty years ago.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1508