P1

P1 - The Mirror Group

In the News industry, there are multiple large conglomerates such as Trinity Mirror. The current CEO of the Mirror group is Simon Fox who owns several subsidiaries and provides a range of newspapers including The Daily Mirror, The Daily Record and The Sunday People. There are several ways in which news is distributed and consumed by an audience so that the target audience can be as wide as possible. These news distribution methods consist of websites, print, social media, radio and TV. Traditional methods of print newspapers are typically the most common way of consuming news. However, the fast increase of technological convergence is having an impact on this. In total, they own 323 newspapers meaning that they have a very large audience reach.

Another news company I have researched is News Corp, which is a conglomerate that is owned by Rupert Murdoch and his family. They have a very large audience, as they own the Wall Street Journal, Market watch and Barron’s. They also own newspapers in the UK such as such as The Sun, The Sunday Times and the Times. Additionally they own American papers such as the New York Post and Wall street journal.

 There are pros and cons of one major conglomerate delivering news via different methods, which consist of:

Pros

 It is easier for people to access the news due to modern technology advancing.

Easy to target a specific audience

They can reach a larger audience as people can access this news from different media platforms

Cons

As it comes from one company, it is the same news repeatedly on different platforms

The news stories across all platforms will likely be bias as they are by the same company

Gatekeepers

Gatekeepers are news agencies/distributors that have the ability to decide what news is shown to society. However, they are becoming less important as anyone has the right to publish news online via social media or blogs as they aren't regulated. As these stories are published on regulated platforms such as social media they are deemed as less reliable by the public. the public tend to trust big news distributors such as Sky News and BBC News. For example, the BBC is one of the largest and well trusted 'gatekeepers' in the UK.