THE MEDIA

The plan of the lecture

1. The importance of the national press.

2. The two types of national newspapers.

3. Papers and politics. The national press: sex & scandals.

4. The BBC.

5. Radio.

6. Television.

The list of the new words:

1. to `dedicate – посвящать, предназначать

2. circu`lation – тираж

3. de`liver – доставлять, разносить

4. `broadsheet – листовка, плакат

5. `cater- отвечать требованиям, обслуживать посетителя

6. `tabloid- 1. малоформатная газета со сжатым текстом и большим количеством иллюстраций; 2. бульварная газета

7. paper`folding – фальцовка газеты

8. political in`tegrity – политическая честность, неприкасаемость

9. «the fourth estate» - «четвёртое сословие», (ирон.) пресса

10. to en`sure \in`So:\ - гарантировать, обеспечить

11. in`vasion – посягательство, вторжение

12.`licence – лицензия

13. to veto \`vi:tou\ -запретить, наложить вето

1. The importance of the national press

British people watch a lot of television. They are also reported to be the world’s most dedicated home-video users. But this doesn’t mean that they have given up reading. They are the world’s third biggest newspaper buyers; only the Japanese and the Swedes buy more.

Newspaper publication is dominated by the national press. Nearly 80 % of all households buy a copy of one of the main national papers every day. There are more than eighty local and regional daily papers; but the total circulation of all of them together is much less than the combined circulation of the national „dailies”. The only non-national papers with significant circulations are published in the evenings, when they do not compete with the national papers, which always appear in the mornings.

Most local papers do not appear on Sundays, so on that day the dominance of the national press is absolute. The „Sunday papers“ are so called because that is the only day on which they appear. The Sunday papers sell slightly more copies than the national dailies and are thicker. Some of them have six or more sections making up a total of well over 200 pages.

People couldn’t be expected to do without their newspapers for even one day, especially a day when there was more free time to read them. Another indication of the importance of „the papers“ is the morning “paper round”. Most newsagents organize these, and more than half of the country’s readers get their morning paper delivered to their door by a teenager who gets up at around half-past five every day in order to earn a bit of extra pocket money.

2. The two types of national newspaper

Each of the national papers can be characterized as belonging to one of two distinct categories. The “quality papers”, or “broadsheets”, cater for the better educated readers. The “popular papers”, or “tabloids”, sell to a much larger readership. They contain far less print than the broadsheets and far more pictures. They use larger headlines and write in a simpler style of English. While the broadsheets devote much space to politics and other “serious” news, the tabloids concentrate on “human interest” stories, which often means sex and scandal!

However, the broadsheets do not completely ignore sex and scandal or any other aspect of public life. Both types of papers devote equal amounts of attention to sport.

The reason that the quality newspapers are called broadsheets and the popular ones tabloids is because they are different shapes. The broadsheets are twice as large as the tabloids. It is a mystery why, in Britain, reading intelligent papers should need highly developed skills of paper-folding! But it certainly seems to be the rule.

To broadsheets belong: The Times, The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, The Observer, the Sunday Times and the Sunday Telegraph. The tabloids group include: The News of the World, The Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Express.

London has two evening newspapers, the London Standard and the Evening News.

The four most famous provincial newspapers are The Scotsman (Edinburgh), the Glasgow Herald, the Yorkshire Post (Leeds) and the Belfast Telegraph, which present national as well as local news. The highest circulation belongs to women’s weeklies woman and Woman’s Own (1,700,000 and 1,660,000 respectively). The most important journals are the Economist, the Spectator and the New Statesman.