Class

• McKendrick found there was a marginalisation of poverty that chalked it up to unfortunate circumstances rather than examining it from a structural perspective
• Shildrick and MacDonald found those in poverty were considered to be part of a workshy underclass dependent on the welfare state
• Constant news coverage of benefits scroungers creates a stigma that those on benefits are undeserving
• Jones says the working class is demonised in the media and shown to have an inferior culture to the rest of society - eg the word chav denoting a specific w/c image and personality
• Curran and Seaton found the interests of the working class were rarely represented
• Strikes are often reported from the perspective of owners and police, not the workers
• Newman says the working class is presented as deviant
• The middle class are assumed to be the default audience for any media coverage; the dominant half of the binary pair
• Most media professionals are middle class hence middle class culture is most prominent in the media
• Jones - Madeline McCann vs Sharon Matthews - one got much more media attention, the other became a political tool to justify welfare cuts
• Newman - upper class is presented as admirable and desirable
• Altman - increased focus on the consumerism of wealth and expensive products
• Nairn said there was limited criticism of the monarchy, though in recent decades this is changing
• Rise of new media means upper class is being criticised more
• Working class characters are most prominent in soap operas
• Liberal bigotry - journalists assume working class are all foul-mouthed racists who hate immigrants
• 'Experts' in news are invariably middle class