Over the past few weeks I have been exploring Tabloid papers and what they have to offer their readers. As someone who, maybe shamefully, rarely buys any type of newspaper at all due to the more accessible nature of reading news online, I was shocked by what I saw. I have always known that Tabloids have been somewhat of a gimmick and it's pages are essentially more gossip than gritty journalism, but there was still a part of me that hoped these newspapers had a hint of 'real' news in them. Instead, I was faced with an overwhelming amount of boobs, misbehaving celebrities, something-or-other about The X Factor and pages and pages about sport.
I guess I don't really think all this crap is worth reading.
I'm not saying that I'm not partial to a bit of gossip, I got quite excited when I found out Beyonce was pregnant and I can understand how who won The X Factor may be considered as front page news. But I don't necessarily agree with it. Who really gives a shit about who won The X Factor? How is it effecting our lives other than plaguing our minds? I watch the programme myself but I'm not naive enough to get sucked into the brainwashing and cliched repetitive nature but then again, I would never buy The Sun.
I was also quite shocked at the amount of naked women and generally sexist images being fed to me. Typically, Page 3's set of melons smacked me right in the face and all I could think of was Phil Mitchell cutting out Page 3 girls like days of the week and sticking them up on his garage wall. Stereotypical? Maybe. But so is the concept of having a naked lady on Page 3. Even funnier than this was how one of the page 3 girls were quoted to have saying "watching football is my favourite pass-time." Now maybe it is, or maybe a girl that watches football is attractive to The Sun readers. But there were pictures of boobs throughout the newspaper not just at the start. Most shocking of all to me were the adverts for sex lines towards the back of the newspaper. There were rows and rows of slightly 'disturbing' sex chat lines but the granny sex ones were by far the worse...tacky images of 60+ woman with one boob hanging out of her Marks and Spencer's bra is certainly not something I would want to see over my cornflakes. This is even before I start imagining my own grandma talking dirty to some pervert for 36p a minute.
1) 
2)1) Mock-ups of sex chat up lines, using real and more 'normal' images of Grandmas, teenagers and Mums and Daughters that were featured sexually in Tabloid newspapers. Here, I have tried to juxtapose the wrong with the right. On the right of this is my own version of a News of the World front page (a newspaper that no longer exists) which features both Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron being praised. Both printed on newspaper.
2) Here, I have removed all the images from the front page of the Daily Star and placed my own collaged images over the top which highlights the things I most commonly found throughout the newspaper pages. Those being, Football, The X Factor, Women and Booze.
I worry that so many Britons buy and digest these newspapers and consider that they are credible news and essentially a source for what is happening in Britain on a day-to-day basis. I'm not surprised that Britain is in the state it is in through reading our tabloids and it angers me that the journalists writing for them have such excellent jobs as they have the opportunity to influence so many people yet choose to influence them so badly.
Sigh. I guess I will just have to lie back and think of England.
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