Learner response: Newspapers assessment

Your Newspapers assessment took on some challenging material - regulation of the press, pluralism and power in the media.

There is a huge amount we can learn from this experience - from basic content and theory to structuring longer 20-mark essay questions. 

The first part of your learner response is to look carefully at your mark, grade and comments from your teacher. If anything doesn't make sense,ask your teacher - it's crucial we're learning from the process of assessments and feedback as we move towards the exams at the end of this year. 

Your learner response is as follows:

Create a new blog post on your Media 1 Exam blog called 'Newspapers assessment learner response' and complete the following tasks:

1) Type up your feedback in full (you don't need to write the mark and grade if you want to keep this confidential).

WWW: This is a mixed picture: you've clearly revised and made some excellent points in several of the questions. You've got some good Clay Shirky quotes and offer some examples and context from the industry. However,... 

EBI: You have got very confused on the regulation question and basically argue the opposite to what you are trying to say. Look at the mark scheme and revise this carefully.

- You miss out on the two easy marks at the beginning: basic errors/missing knowledge.

- You need more examples from CSPs... the detailed discussion of the i design and context in Q3 is great but you need this across the board. 

2) Read the whole mark scheme for this assessment carefully. Identify three potential points that you could have made in your Question 3 answer - the i newspaper standing for "quality, clarity and independence".

• Stories are generally presented with balance: on chosen CSP edition, Theresa May’s Brexit (“The Salzburg disaster”) front-page story is balanced with double-page spread inside which includes analysis column acknowledging the difficulty of her job.

• Clarity is achieved through clean design – like a website, image heavy with stories short and easy to digest within the daily commute.

• Respected and trusted newspaper brand, continuing the work of ‘parent’ paper the Independent which stated it would be “Free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence”.

3) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your Question 4 answer - arguments against statutory regulation of the newspaper industry.

• Newspapers must be free to pursue investigative journalism – Clay Shirky describes news as a “social good” that is so vital to democracy.

• The phone hacking scandal that sparked the Leveson Inquiry was covered by criminal law – the police should be the only regulators for the newspaper industry. Similarly, libel laws exist to protect victims of press intrusion and people like Chris Jefferies (wrongly accused of murder) were compensated financially.

• IPSO is more powerful than the PCC and can fine newspapers and order them to print corrections or apologies on the front page. The Daily Mail has been forced to do this on several occasions, for example following a story regarding an Iraqi man’s compensation claim.

4) Now use the mark scheme to identify three potential points that you could have made in your Question 5 answer - whether the pluralist model allows the newspaper industry to operate effectively.

• Clay Shirky has discussed the ‘End of audience’ and the rise in ‘mass amateurisation’. This may be an example of the rise of pluralism but it is arguably destroying trust in news and the ability for traditional news institutions to make money (Shirky describes the internet leading to “an abundance of content and a scarcity of profit”). Citizen journalism may have influenced the news agenda in places (overruling traditional editors broadly following Galtung and Ruge’s News Values) but it is also poor quality, difficult to verify and often soft news ‘clickbait’ rather than important for society.

• Curran and Seaton argue that audiences need to be empowered if media industries are to operate effectively. This is questionable in the newspaper industry. MailOnline is driven by audience clicks rather than professional editors (gatekeepers). This arguably does significant harm to the industry, reducing news to ‘clickbait’, celebrity gossip and the ‘sidebar of shame’ that MailOnline is infamous for.

• The i newspaper is generally viewed as leftwing despite its mission statement of “Quality, clarity and independence”. Indeed, the i’s parent paper the Independent launched in 1986 with the banner: “Free from party political bias, free from proprietorial influence”. Could it be argued that the UK newspaper industry is so strongly rightwing that when a newspaper plants itself in the centre ground (as the i newspaper intends) it inadvertently appears to be leftwing? The i’s content (e.g. the briefing on p2) explicitly offers readers a broad diet with pages summarising the content and editorial line from other news publications from the UK and worldwide. Perhaps the i newspaper captures pluralist ideals while the Daily Mail offers evidence for Marxists of a ‘ruling elite’?

5) Finally, look over your mark, teacher comments and the mark scheme - plus your answers to the task above - to write a complete essay plan for Question 5. 

Paragraph plan:

1 - (agree) talk about Curran and Seaton puralist model
   - other side of the agrument (marxist views)

continuation...

2 - clay shirky 'End of audience' 

3 - the i news generally being viewed as leftwing despite its mission statement of “Quality, clarity and independence”

4 - closing paragraph 

You can either use something similar to your actual answer or alternatively start from scratch. Make sure it is an extensive, detailed plan focused on the question (Curran & Seaton, pluralism and how effective the newspaper industry operates) and make sure you include specific references to the CSPs - the i and Daily Mail/MailOnline. Aim for around five paragraphs in total and make sure you cover both sides of the argument to some extent.