Mass Media

Mass Media

People like to read newspapers, journals and magazines, because they want to be informed and get the latest news. We can find different sorts of articles in a newspaper: on economics, politics, sports or editorials (giving the personal opinion of the editors), features (reports about an interesting subject, place or preson).
Basically, there are 2 types of newspapers: serious papers tabloids (gossip about famous people).
Magazines are published once a week/month and bring international and national news. Journals are serious magazines written by scientists, doctors, teachers.

Great-Britain

The British communication media is the most influental in the world.
There are 5 ,,quality dailies” or broadsheets: The Times, The Guardian, The Financial Times, The Independent, and The Daily Telegraph which contain various national and international news, reports from parliamentary debates.

The Times is the most famous of them all. It’s an independent paper which brings editorials presenting views on politics. It has 3 weekly supplements: The Times Literary Supplement, The Times Educational Supplement and The Times Higher Education Supplement.
The Daily Telegraph is read mostly by those people whose political opinions are Conservative. The Guardian is a paper of the left, together with its sister paper, The Observer.

The Financial Times publishes business and exchange news, and also famous art reviews.
There are papers with a very high circulation such as The Daily Mirror and The Sun which are tabloids. There are advertisements, competitions about pop stars, pictures, cartoon strips and humorous drawings.
The British journals have also a large circulation: The Economist covers world affairs. The New Statesman and Spectator are weekly journals with different political viewpoints.
There is no censorship of the press in GB but if the editors write lies, they can be forced to pay large fines. Nearly all the papers pay to the reporting of sports.

In GB radio and television broadcasting is provided by BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation), which has 5 programmes for radio broadcasting: Radio 1 presents pop music, Radio 2 provides light entertainment, Radio 3 is intended for minority interests, Radio 4 includes the main news and regional programmes, Radio 5 is for sport, education and children’s programmes.
Five TV channels provide a wide choice of programmes including quiz-shows, soap operas and reality shows. Sky News and BBC World are popular news channels worldwide.

USA

The largest daily newspapers are The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and The New York Post, followed by such titles as The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, The Detroit News and The San Francisco Chronicle. All of these are very serious ,,quality papers”. The New York Times is ranked as ,,the world’s top daily”. There are over 11 000 magazines and periodicals published in the US. Some of them have international editions, for example the National Geographic, Vogue, Reader’s Digest.
Hundreds of radio and TV stations of the USA broadcast in languages other than English for minorities such as Chinese, French, Spanish.

People who don’t like reading newspapers or think it’s too expensive to buy it every day and then throw it away, listen to the radio. The news is read by a presenter and there is also a lot of good music. There is usually a variety of radio programmes to choose from: news programmes and weather forecasts, chat shows, educational programmes, quiz and breakfast shows, phone-in programmes and finally documentaries.
Radio is very popular and many of us like listening to the radio throughout the day no matter what we are doing, like cooking, painting a room and working in the garden.

Television is definitely the most popular source of information, many people spend hours watching TV programmes, like soap operas, sitcoms (series in which there is a different story each week about the same group of people), lots of films and cartoons. There is a wide selection of TV channels.
The media play an important role in society and some experts say they’re too powerful and influential today.