'The Star is not a truth-seeking enterprise.'

The Leveson Inquiry continues to enthusistically throw up more chunks of tabloid vomit into the ever increasing lake of shame-puke lapping at the embarrassed feet of a society that pretends it wasn't eager to pay for the papers that funded this filth. 

Read this one to see the full context of the Star quote above.  Then check out this one in which ex-tabloid hack Paul McMullan tells some exciting stories, including the time he 'paid one "rent boy" £2,000, then dressed up as another to expose a priest. Having snapped the picture of the reverend in flagrante, the two ran off in their underpants "through a nunnery at midnight" to get the story safely into the paper.'  

Ethnic Identity - Ethnic variation in prison sentences

We'll be looking at ethnic identity soon, in another one of my bowel-shatteringly exciting lessons, which will include some details about how identity can be affected by the different treatment received by different groups at the hands of the merciless hounds of the law.  Here is an article relating to a study carried out by The Guardian (that's a newspaper, you may have seen it on the magazine racks when you are looking for the latest copy of 'Activities for Simpletons Monthly' or whatever drivel you like to read on the commode). It says offenders from ethnic minorities are more likely than their white counterparts to be sentenced to prison for certain categories of crimes, and this is based on analysis of more than one million court records.

Once you've digested this, take a look at this which looks at how many judges are white, middle class and Oxbridge educated.  Could these issues be related? 

Gender Identity in the Media - Female Action Roles

'Stop portraying me as a housewife!  Eat hot lead, mysoginists of the media!'

As we have seen during some of my bladder-burstingly exciting lessons, 'the laydeez' often get a raw deal in TV and Movie roles, where they are often portrayed as weak and/or flawed in some way and best relegated to the kitchen and/or whorehouse, depending on which idiot/pervert is directing the production in question. In exam questions relating to this kind of stuff it is useful to have a few examples of women being cast in strong roles to balance the many examples to the the contrary. Hence my decision to post this link to an article about 'the next wave of celluloid superheroines'.  Read it, chumps.

Why you should read journalism...

This is just to make it easier for you to find interesting things to read.  I know how busy you are, scratching your nether regions and trying to work out what you had for dinner last night by sniffing your own emissions.  This bloke has gone to the trouble of collecting about 100 interesting pieces of journalism from 2010.  I salute him!

Have a look!  There's all sorts of stuff.  Drugs, Jesus, violence, all your favourite things!

AS Class Identity - The Great British Class Survey

What social class are you?!  I don't think you're even human, I doubt you can even legitimately class yourself as a 'mammal' BUT WHY NOT PROVE ME WRONG BY TAKING THIS BBC SURVEY ON CLASS!  YEAH!

Do the Class Survey!

You can read about the survey here. You won't, you're too lazy, but the offer still stands.

Too stupid to complete a survey?  HERE'S SOME VIDEOS INSTEAD!  Let me hear you grunt your approval!

Videos! Grunt! Grunt!

Mass Media - Agenda Setting

For the A2 class...

Agenda Setting Theory    

THE AGENDA-SETTING FUNCTION OF MASS MEDIA this is one of the big studies, by MAXWELL E. McCOMBS AND DONALD L. SHAW

Agenda Setting theory



Examples of agenda setting

This site has lots of stuff you should look at in general regarding Mass Media for revision etc

And here are a couple of  links 1  2 that relate specifically to agenda setting


and also this one looks interesting!

Media Effects - Psywar - Chomsky

A loose assortment of links for you, starting with some straightforward stuff about media effects:

1   2

Here's an essay by Mr Chomsky on  What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream

The real mass media are basically trying to divert people. Let them do something else, but don’t bother us (us being the people who run the show). Let them get interested in professional sports, for example. Let everybody be crazed about professional sports or sex scandals or the personalities and their problems or something like that. Anything, as long as it isn’t serious. Of course, the serious stuff is for the big guys. "We" take care of that.


And a documentary called PSYWAR which may or may not be made by a conspiracy theorist/911 truther.  Here are a couple of reviews discussing it 1   2