I’ve been perusing the UK papers again and have spent a while looking through The Daily Mail which I’m sure I remember as a right wing, but basically even handed paper with some good editorial comment. The online version seems to either belie this memory, or the social situation in the UK has deteriorated to the extent there *is* no ‘good news’ for them to print!
The front page today (22nd May 2008) has the following headlines: Violence between Man. U and Chelsea football fans, child starved to death, husband dies on doorstep, and… well there’s just a multitude of stories of death, degradation and misery.
Surely there is more to the human condition in the UK than this? Maybe there’s a segment of the population that thrives on reading about the worst things people do to each other.
Maybe it reinforces those stereotypes that enable them to think everyone with a leather jacket is out to rob them, if two kids walk down the street then they are a gang and out to cause trouble, that anyone other than a ‘white anglo-saxon protestant’ must be an immigrant living off the dole etc.
Maybe? I’d love to see the research breakdown regarding their target audience and how well the paper meets the requirements. Now *that* would make fascinating reading… more so than the paper itself perhaps.
The Eclectic Interweb 