How valid is the distinction between the popular and the quality press in Britain? (ePub)

Essay from the year 2000 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: 2, Cardiff University (School of European Studies), course: British Society and Culture, language: English, abstract: In the UK you can find a wide range of newspapers. In general you can divide them into quality and popular press. Quality newspapers are The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Independent and The Financial Times. The popular press consists of The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, The Daily Star and The Sun. You can also find a lot of regional newspapers; for example The Evening Standard (London, popular press oriented), The South Wales Echo (South Wales, popular press oriented) and The Western Mail ( Wales, more quality press oriented). In this essay I will refer to the popular press as tabloid press. The aim of this essay is to compare quality press and tabloid press. This I will do with two examples: The Times and The Sun. So the question might arise why I chose just those two newspapers? They are both reflective of their field and are recognized all over the world. However they both belong to the same person: to the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. And so a second question arises: Are there indications that this constellation might minimize the difference between quality and tabloid press? Yet we are in the age of the internet. So a third question arises: Are both newspapers sufficiently represented on the internet?