British newspapers

I feel bad for the majority of Brits.

Why?

Because the "newspapers" they get to read. I am horrified of the fact that a disgusting, repulsive, prejudiced piece of s*it called the Sun is even called "a newspaper".

I mean, I always knew that the tabloids are too something for a critical reader, but I never got to understand that they are nothing but "Celebrity Big Brother fan-zines".

A NEWSpaper????????

A list of the news headlines on www.thesun.co.uk at 23:00 GMT:

Bez Wins Big Brother
Nicola: Hollywood or bust
Panto Flash Dean arrested
Yellow card for binge yobs
New Atkinson slur at bash [racist comment by a former soccer team manager]
Celebrity Big Brother: Caprice and Jez get big boot
Celebrity Big Brother: SAS team on guard at house
Chelsy 'may dump Harry'
Want to quit smoking [advertisement feature]
Biggest booze cruise ever
Toon Bob outed as Gay [cartoons...]
+ a couple of stories (some even exclusively) about murders and murderers
DeNiro's second Taxi call
Jilted Hubby tied ex to bed
Speech by Sven on Nazis [soccer coach]
Love cheat stole £900k
Zoo staff are aping French
Lesbian gets revenge
Risky operation for Posh
+ a couple of more murder stories

+ a couple real news objects hidden behind headlines, such as
Union's Chelsea strikers
Brit major is rapped (abuse pictures)
UK invaded by (foreign) crime mobs
Omagh 'bomber' a new trial
Asylum terror fears


And no, these aren't from the opening site of the Sun's internet site. They are from the News section of the site. Besides the news section, they offer us readers the Sport, Bizarre, Life, Gizmo and Competitions sections, not to forget the page3 section...

An option of the site, "take me to", gives the happy reader the following choices
Betting
Bizarre
Bizarre Exposed
Competitions
Contact Us
DVD Releases
Daily Dosh
Dear Deidre
Dream Team FC
Edit my profile
F1 Dream Team
Fun
Gizmo
Gizmo Gaming
Home
Insurance Deals
Letters - Dear Sun
Life
Loan Deals
Mobile
Motors
Movies
Music Videos
Mystic Meg Stars
News
Page 3
Picture Sales
Sassy
Shop
Sport
Sun Book Shop
Sun Drinks Service
Sun Mortgages
Sun Pet Club
Sun Phone Offer
Sun Services Guide
Sun Weekly Email
Superbabes
Superhunks (GDUB!!!)
TV Biz
The Sun Says
Webchats
Wrestling

I mean, kiss my SQL, or whatever, this is frightening. The Sun is THE newspaper for how many million ppl? 35 million? 40 million?
The sole existance of such a paper should be legally questioned. It makes people even more stupid that they'd be without it. Try to find a bit of world news in that pile of bull... not even to mention foreign affairs. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.


I was supposed to make a contrastive study on the differences between the use of English language in tabloids/broadsheets, but I am so disgusted that I think my studies will continue for yet another extra year.

What is this world turning into?

we are all better off if we ended our own and our loved ones' miseries.

Sorry to all enthusiastic readers of the Sun. Please stop existing.

-Beau

Beau Heem:

Not all our papers are like that you know!!  Some are worse!!

Among our other tabloids we have 'The Sport' which is basically a soft porn rag, with some show biz tittle tattle, and some ridiculous headlines about alien abduction and the like.

The worst IMO is the 'Daily Mail' The paper is aimed predominantly at lower middle class house wives. It bangs the moral drum very hard, spoon feeding narrowminded opinions and biggotry, disguised as quality journalism. It blames ethnic minorities and homosexuals for anything that goes wrong. Its at the forefront of nurturing Islamaphobia in the UK. Its f***ing poison!! and its readership is huge.

 

They are hideous aren't they - and while the bulk of intelligent poeple take them with a large pinch of salt (and read them as comics and for the football, while at the same time taking a legit newpaper) there are plenty whose sole news diet is these aberrations.

It is no better in America, however, where despite the presence of the NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune there are hideous things like the New York Post (Murdoch) which unforgettably brought us that fabulous 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' headline in reference to the French and their refusal to join the 'coalition of the willing'.

Then there are gems like 'The National Enquirer and The Weekly World News. And that's not to mention the growing emasculation of (proper, serious) investigative journalism in the main US broadsheets. 

Having said that - the NY Times-run International Herald Tribune is a fantastic newspaper and as a 'newspaper for the English-speaking world' covers most bases very very well - with a pot pourri of major news, features and sport which do not necessarily have a US news sensibility at heart.   

Also please try www.guardian.co.uk

it's a little more serious, and Bush-bashers will absolutely love its editorial line - the OpEd pages are always great fun to read

 

Beau Heem wrote: I feel bad for the majority of Brits. Why? Because the "newspapers" they get to read. I am horrified of the fact that a disgusting, repulsive, prejudiced piece of s*it called the Sun is even called "a newspaper". -Beau

Couldn't agree more and the sad thing is that in my country, I'm in the minority on this.

Valarius wrote: the Sun has more pictures and shorter paragraphs, making it more accessable

You see this in many tabloid "newspapers", even those which aim (slightly) higher than The Sun, Mirror, Sport etc; it is a common trick to make the 'stories' easier to read. The general rule of thumb is one sentence per paragraph, this enables the reader to take in the information (such as it is) without too much concious thought, and also leads the eye down to the next paragraph, and so on, and so forth. This allows the reactionary sub-literate "prose" of the writer to be assimilated, and tricks your average Sun reader into thinking he/she is "reading" - the worrying thing is, their stupefying reports are percieved as "news", and frequently passed on verbatim as "fact".

Luckily, however, we do still have some quality newspapers, such as The Observer, and The Independant, who, whilst not 100% unbiased (Whoops, sorry Peter - slipped in a double-negative there), are at least consistently well written and allow the reader to reach an informed conclusion.

I'm happy that my outburst opened up a little conversation here.

Don't worry guys, I do read the Telegraph almost daily (to further my language skills etc.).

The funny part is that I've held a copy of the Sun dozens (if not hundreds) of times in my hand, knowing that it's a crappy piece of s*it. But it never struck me before, just how really, really, really bad it is. Visiting the internet site for the first time was a true eye-opener (cf list of news headlines in my original post or www.thesun.co.uk). To tell you the truth, there are more news stories covered in a customer magazine of the Finnish betting monopoly than there are in the Sun.

I am/was supposed to make a contrastive study between the style and the language used in tabloid/broadsheet newspapers and  I'm not willing to use a hell of a lot of time to this assignment. I am going for obvious differences, such as word/sentence/paragraph length - you know, the quasi-academic stuff - and I wouldn't need large amounts of articles (if only I could find articles on both papers discussing a single issue). If I cannot find a sufficient number of articles with a "shared" theme or subject, I am forced to use more material from both newspapers (and that's a lot more work to do...). I am kind of hoping that I can find the Celeb Big Bro' stuff from the Telegraph internet site as well,

NOT


Cheers.

-Beau

Tabloid sized quality newspapers are not only useful for train-reading; they also make things a great deal easier when you share your house with two very inquisitive cats, to whom any form of paper is to be pounced upon for the sheer enjoyment of hearing their owner shout such endearments, as

" off you little "

and

"You , I've spilt my tea & knocked the ashtray over, now!"

Well, that's what I did this Sunday anyway.