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Ownership and Regulation


What does regulation means?
Regulation: The owners of newspapers sometimes influence the editorial stance of a newspaper. Newspapers will also try to influence how the public vote in elections., so it is always important that newspapers stick to a code of conduct or rules set out by independent organisations. 

Britain’s most right-winged newspaper is voted The Daily Mail, and a total of 81% of the public considered the paper to be right-wing. The majority of people consider the Times to be either slightly right of centre or fairly right-wing, so therefore it is seen as the least right-wing of the right-wing papers. At the left end of the spectrum, the mirror comes second, after the Guardian, in Britain’s most left-wing newspapers, as slightly more considered the Guardian to be “left-wing”, at 16% compared to The Mirror’s 11%.

Due to government control, the free press in the UK is very important. Certain stories may get to the public domain that wouldn't of been able to with the government censorship and control without the free press. If the media are free to write about government, they can report on the performance of government, so therefore the readers can learn necessary information and form individual opinions about government which creates a more corrupt government.

Media freedom is basically just a limit on government power, so if the media isn't free, then government has an unneeded significant power over individuals. A range of ideas are able to be tested and shared and tested with media freedom. The range of ideas presented in a free media extends the experience of consumers of media. A lack of a free press can lead to a corrupt government and censorship of the media, which is seen in places such as North Korea, as their leader, Kim Jon-Un, dictates and controls the country and the media.  

Hesmondhalgh's theory on cultural industries relates to this, because DMGT (owner of the Daily Mail) also owns multiple other companies. This therefore shows the integration of cultural industries which follows the normal capitalist patterns that can be seen in Hesmondhalgh's theory.

I believe that ownership should raise concerns in the UK because it doesn't create a balanced media. outputas complete control over media products may lead to censorship of major news and permanent ideologies being passed through constantly rather than . Complete control leads typically to big issues and turns a democracy into a dictatorship, evidentially seen in places such as North Korea (who believe ridiculous things such as leader Kim Jong-un doesn't excreciate due to the censorship in the media). 

From a political side, mass ownership of media and newspapers leads to issues as owners of the media resources push their ideologies through even if it is subconsciously as they ultimately decide what is in their paper. This is reinforced in Curran and Seaton's theory who believe that 'Media industries follow the normal capitalist pattern of increasing concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer hands. This leads to a narrowing of the range of opinions represented and a pursuit of profit at the expense of quality or creativity... It is constrained by nationalism and state censorship. News is still controlled by powerful news organisations, who have successfully defended their oligarchy'.

You could apply Shirky's End of audience theory with these online news websites and platforms as the consumers decide what news they want to view based on subscriptions. Behaviour can vary across social media sites as stated in Shirky's theory, for example you may subscribe to a particular newspaper on one social media platform yet when a big news story from a different paper is broadcasted and shared by peers consumers are directed to read that story as opposed to any other as it is available with one click, proving that the consumer becomes decisive and behaviour is less predictable. Arguably this theory may not apply as frequent customers may tailor stories to their preferences and only go to that particular site to get their news, they would therefore have predictable behaviour and multiple people with these preferences may form a mass of audience that can be related to and cared for throughout the paper in the media (for example readers of the Guardian may want more political and factual journalism so may actively seek for the content and the paper can comply with the subscription).

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