Wednesday 14 September 2011

What's the point of 'Today's Headlines'?

This is one of our readers' favourite items. But what's the point? Or, why do we bother? Aside from the obvious need to know (if you're interested, anyway) about what's going on in the country we have chosen to live in, there is another point that those who have been brought up in countries with an ostensibly free and objective press may never have experienced. Not all press (the word is Media nowadays, we believe) is as objective as that in the UK, where in any case, it has become less and less so since Prospero worked on Fleet Street. In Spain, after forty years of dictatorship, the press is still heavily influenced by party politics, and in some cases by a radical extremism that is always about to fall off the edge. So, in the corner on the Left, in various weights and conditions>>>
(depending largely on where you're looking from) are El País (biggest selling newspaper in Spain) and Público (fairly radically Leftish but well designed); and in the corner on the Right, also of varying weights and conditions (but whose sales figures can only mean that someone other than the advertisers and buyers are financing most of them) are El Mundo and ABC (about which is the previous parenthetical remark). There are innumerable regional and local newspapers all over the country, not to mention specific media such as those exclusively about sport (best seller, Marca), but we don't deal with them all over on CampoPulse (you can see them all, all, all and a lot more on Kiosko.net, which is linked on our sidebar as International Press).  If you can't manouvre between the lines, it is not surprising. Their 'tone-of-voice' is defined by their political stance - as, indeed, is, say, the Daily Mail's or the Mirror's, only the leanings of these are less obvious than Spain's equivalents. Included among the headlines of the day are also a choice of Business & Finance headlines (with leanings similar to the above) and the headlines for the Campo de Gibraltar from the area's premier newspaper, Europa Sur. (Just thought you might like to have a look for yourself on this daily weekday feature on CampoPulse - click here for today's Today's Headlines.)

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