Newspapers way of working

2004-03-25

In this essay I have chosen to take a closer look at the American newspaper Washington Post and the English newspaper The Guardian. It’s pretty interesting to take a deeper look in these newspapers out of a given perspective, because personally I had a certain opinion about American and English media in general. I can’t say that my “picture” of the given media prospects has changed dramatically, but I have found some patterns in the way the newspapers describes for an example: The American President George W. Bush and the Prime Minister of England Tony Blair, when it comes to domestic and foreign questions.

Many times the newspapers make many times a kind of a generally statement, depending on if the given subject is of domestic or foreign art. That means that the newspapers have a tendency to back their country up when it comes to foreign based questions, but be more critical when it comes to domestic based questions.

People in general may think that the articles in the newspapers are true. True to whom? Every newspaper and every reporter (writer) are telling stories in one way or another. They give a view from a given perspective, such thing as an objective article doesn’t exist. The Washington Post and The Guardian are no exceptions from this reality. The following question will be: can we consider the views that these newspapers are given us as propaganda? Yes, we can! As a matter of fact both these newspapers use all four “tools” (simplification, condensation, disguise and strengthening) that makes the articles considerably propagandistic. The conflict in Iraq isn’t as untroubled and successful as these newspapers put it to us, the public. The problem for the newspapers are that its too complicated to give that varying coverage that it is to recommend. They prefer to keep up the pride of their own nation with not being so critical, but if they would choose to be more critical, they would be opposed by their country’s own government and war-staff.

Even though the newspapers are far from open minded in the matter of giving both sides of the coin, I must admit that they are surprisingly opened minded paradoxically enough. Both the newspapers talk to the opposition, but not as much to satisfy me. I think American and English media have some kind of underlying biases that in the end underestimates the public. The media thinks that the public just want to know one side of the coin, which isn’t true. The public wants variation so they can make up their own opinion.

As I mentioned in the beginning I also found a difference between how the two leaders George W. Bush and Tony Blair are portrayed in the two newspapers. An overview tells us that the both newspapers seems to back up their leaders much more when it comes to foreign tasks, but when it comes to domestic political questions they seems to be slightly more critical minded.

It’s quite hard for me as a young Swedish gentleman to understand why the view in American and English media are so one sided. After all, Sweden hasn’t been involved in any war for about 200 years and I haven’t done any military service. The importance of war, and perhaps killing, is a more dominant factor in USA and England and their cultural structure.

To understand we just need to look back at history, which have a very big and strong influence on the modern way of thinking. All this makes the war in Iraq more understandable, but not more acceptable, in many ways. The public in USA and England have therefore a larger rate of patience with the fact that the picture media give them is one sided. Because when your nation is involved in a conflict or a war you will always feel more or less threatened. The propagandistic view media gives you makes the day to day life more endurable.


Dan W Boter
danbor02@student.umu.se