Bad news sells papers! Blog 2

"How reliable do you think newspaper reports are about climate change? To what extent do UK newspaper reports link climate change to sustainable development?"


For this blog post I aim to look at the content of both tabloid and broadsheet newspapers in regard to climate change and the link to sustainable development, I will also be looking at class structures of the reader of each type of newspaper. Finally I will be using my personal experiences of the July 2007 floods in Worcestershire to try to support my opinions.

First of all in my opinion what do I think are the main differences between tabloid and broadsheet newspapers? I personally think class structure is a huge issue. Broadsheet readers tend to be defined as A (Upper class) or B (Middle class) to which comprises over half of total readership. Whilst those who tend to read Tabloids are supposedly from C (Lower middle class/skilled working class, D (Working class) and E (Underclass) which comprise of most of the total readership. The Newspaper Marketing Agency (2007) highlighted from their research that 60% of those who read Broadsheet newspapers are from the social groups A and B. However those readers only make up 20% of Tabloid readers.

From this information we can work out who reads what. This information then tells us that people who read Broadsheets are likely to be interllectuals who are most likely to have a better education than say someone who reads Tabloids. So perhaps we can say that this could mean that Broadsheets are perhaps more reliable in terms of accurate and reliable content.

As I live in Worcestershire I have memories of a lot of Tabloid coverage of the July 2007 floods. Worcestershire along with other counties suffered quite badly. In particular areas such as Droitwich and Upton upon Severn both have rivers running through them, both burst their banks during this time. I remember pictures in Tabloids such as The Sun and The Mirror which show Droitwich High Street under several feet of water. Having only been living about five miles away from Drotiwich it made me aware of exactly how bad the weather was especially with the M5 being closed and people spending the night in their cars on the motorway. Looking back now through the articles from the time there was a high volume of articles in the Tabloids and even quite a few in the Broadsheets. Even several months later both were still reporting about the event and the clean up that followed.

An area of Drotwich (This is actually a main road)

Droitwich High Street July 2007

Two links below one from a Tabloid and one from a Broadsheet reporting on the floods:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2120992.ece

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article246571.ece

Having looked back on the articles from both Tabloids and Broadsheets from that time I can honestly say from experience that the Broadsheets tended to be more informative, reliable and accurate than the Tabloid newspapers. As for linking with climate change with sustainable development I can honestly say that Broadsheets do this a lot better than Tabloids. The latter tend to have shock tactics headlines, short articles but dont explain what we can do about it. Whilst in my opinion Broadsheets tend to analyse and try to come up with reasoned arguements and logical solutions.

For instance I found an article by The Mirror "Golf Course at St Andrews could sink under the sea by 2050" However all the article states is that a climate change expert states that the golf course could be lost by rising sea levels. This 'expert' does not state why they believe this, or what evidence they had to come up with this conclusion. This article is misinforming the public and not giving them the facts to make informed decisions.

I also found an article from The Times "Looting, panic buying and a water shortage" . This is a reasonable article and states facts and what the issue is, it also states the problems faced and how they were overcoming them.

In conclusion I believe that there are many theories and opinions to whether newspaper reports are reliable in regards to climate change and the link to sustainable development. However there is a distinct gap between the content of Tabloids and Broadsheets and that Broadsheets are more likely to find a link between climate change and sustainable development.

http://www.http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/content/image-galleries/droitwich_floods_jul07_gallery.shtml?36

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2120922.ece

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news-old/top-stories/2008/10/14/golf-course-at-st-andrews-could-sink-under-sea-by2050-115875-20801729/

Boykoff, M.T. (2008) The cultural politics of climate change discourse in UK tabloids. Political Geography 27 (5) 549-569

Private Cars! No1

Lets start this blog with a little theory *yawn*. The UK Government Sustainable Development Strategy 'securing the future' was launched in March 2005 by the Prime Minister. It states that sustainable development is "enabling all people throughout the world to satisfy their basic needs and employ a better quality of life for future generations".

It is suggested that the strategy is supposed to be useful and be an accessible reference for people and to highlight the challenges of sustainable development to those who may not know what it is or what it is about. The final idea is that it should help the reader to understand these issues and want to find out more.

Now that the extremely boring bits are out of the way things should start to get a little more interesting. The private car indicator from the above document states that "carbon emissions have increased by 4% between 1990 and 2006. To me this sounds a bit daft that emissions have increased by quite a huge amount in 4%. Yes I agree no doubt that there are more cars on the road in 2006 and 1990 however the majority of them in my opinion use cleaner fuel, do more miles to the gallon and don't emit as much emissions. However in hind sight perhaps the reason why the levels have increased this much could be do with the fact that the amount of cars coming onto the road every year have overtaken our advances on trying to meet this goal of lowering fuel emissions.

I think perhaps to lower these emissions and get in line for when the next strategy is released people need to seriously think about what they are driving. We all know about the mothers who drive their kids the 1 mile to school in their big 4 x 4's and people carriers instead of walking or getting the bus. What's the harm in having a small town car to do the school run if necessary? Why the monster truck to drop the little darlings off at school? If I ever got a lift to or from school i'd think it were my birthday. It used to take me a good 40 minutes to get home from school by foot all year round. Anyway going back on topic if people were to consider using more economic cars then maybe fuel emissions would indeed come down and start to make a massive difference.

In my opinion I feel that I am being economical in the way I drive and what I actually drive. I mean I don't have my car on campus as I live in halls, I use the bus to get into town and to other various places. When at home I don't drive to excessive speeds, gentle on the old gears and accelerator. Lets have some figures and pictures to liven things up.

Now don't laugh please this is what I drive (same color but not exact car). 1.2 Litre Fiat Panda. It does 50 miles per gallon (MPG) combined and is only a band 3 in tax which is pretty reasonable.

Compared to

The Range Rover TDV6HSE which is a 2.7 Litre Diesel Turbo which does 27.2 MPG combined

So in the scheme of things I believe I am helping to get emission levels down by what and how I drive. For instance even though the range rover is a diesel it still only does half of the MPG mine does. Can you imagine what it would do if it were petrol and less economical?

Another aspect to which i've thought quite a bit about is that perhaps our driving habits as a society need to change. How many of us have sat in traffic jams whereby we've all sat with our engines on polluting the environment and wasting precious fuel? Not enough people car share and when looking around in jams you can see many people sat in cars on their own. Just think if every single occupant shared with someone else perhaps that traffic jam wouldn't exist? If that traffic jam didn't exist then would emissions be lower? Also if rush hour was staggered and less people had to be at work during the rush hour periods would that again cause emissions to be lower?

To conclude I think it is a good choice to include private cars into the strategy. I believe we do have a problem in terms of several factors such as the number of cars we have on the road, the amount of emissions they produce and ultimately the decision on which cars we drive. By having the private car indicator in the strategy it could be a wake up call for someone looking at it to think that perhaps they should downsize or is that journey really worth it or could I use other forms of transport? I believe that there hasn't been much progress in this area as many people are not willing to change their habits. In my opinion I feel that people ignore the issues happening around them in terms of emissions, global warming etc and think it will never happen to them. Also people are too busy in their lives to take time out to think about these issues and what effects they are having in the world.

I think over time emissions may go down in that we are now switching to more environmentally better ways of travel such as eco cars and those which run on alternative fuels. With the economy the way it is people are perhaps downsizing to more cheaper cars and cars which are cheaper to run.

By including private cars in the strategy it is the first step to lowering emissions in many ways. If it works only time will tell.