Newspaper In Britan

LIFE THERE


NEWSPAPERS IN BRITAIN

All newspapers in Britain, daily or Sunday ones, can broadly he divided into the quality press and the popular press. The quality newspapers are also known as “heavies” and they usually deal with home and overseas news, with detailed and extensive coverage of sports and cultural events. Besides they also carry financial reports, travel news and book andfilm reviews.
The popular press or the “populars” are also known as tabloids as they are smaller in size being halfsheet in format. Some people also call them the “gutter press” offering news for the people less interested in daily detailed news reports. They are characterised by large headlines, carry a lot of big photographs, concentrate on the personal aspects of news, with reports of the recentsensational and juicy bits of events, not excluding the Royal family. The language of a tabloid is much more colloquial, if not specific, than that of quality newspapers.
Here is a possibly witty though true classification of English newspapers:
“The Times” is read by the people who run the country;
“The Mirror” is read by the people who think they run the country;
“The Guardian” is read bythe people who think about running the country;
“The Mail” is read by wives of the people who run the country;
“The Daily Telegraph” is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be;
“The Express” is read by the people who think it is still run as it used to be;
“The Sun” is read by the people who don’t care who runs the country as long as the naked girl at pagethree is attractive.
In Britain today there are four nationwide quality papers: “The Times”, “The Daily Telegraph”, “The Guardian” and “The Independent”. “The Daily Mail”, “The Daily Mirror”, “The Sun”, “The Daily Express” and “The Daily Star” are usually considered to be “populars”.
“The Times” founded in 1785, is read by the minority of people today. It has a rather small circulation, but itsinfluence is greater than its circulation figures (100,000 copies a day). It is an establishment newspaper, read by lawyers, politicians, and businessmen, by all those who work in the government at large. It is not an organ of the Conservative Party, but still is rather conservative in views it expresses, though it is reliable and unbiased and claims to be politically independent.
However, “TheTimes”, as many Englishmen stress themselves, always supports the government in power, the bureaucracy, because the bureaucracy in Britain, they say, does not change when the general elections take place. It is, thus, the newspaper for the upper echelon of the civil service.
“The Daily Telegraph”, founded in 1855, is a very conservative paper. However, it has a circulation twice as big as that of “TheTimes”, “The Guardian” or “The Independent”. It has a nickname – “The Torygraph” after the nickname “Tory” of the Conservative Party. This newspaper has rather a comprehensive news and sports coverage. Some say it has a more objective reporting of what is going on in the world than any other quality newspaper. It is right of centre and has always supported the Conservative Party.
It is notablethat although newspapers are normally associated with a particular political viewpoint, either left or right, most of them have no formal or legal links with political parties.
“The Guardian” has a slightly bigger circulation than “The Times”. It is a liberal newspaper, noted for its lively reporting and campaigning support for “worthy causes” such as education, medical reforms, the problems ofaging people and retirees, protection of the environment, etc. It also claims to be politically independent, but it is left of centre and formally supports the Liberal Party of Britain. Some British people say that the reporting of “The Guardian” is biased and trendy, concentrating mostly on things like fashions, homosexuals, etc., but still it is enjoyed by its readers.
“The Independent” was...