Who Reads the Papers?
From Yes, Prime Minister (BBC)
Categories:
Run time: 1:49
Clip Description: Jim Hacker runs through the British national newspapers and the kind of reader each one has, with Sir Humphrey and Bernard, and Sir Humphrey lands the punchline about the tabloid. Probably the most-quoted scene in the series and a long-standing staple of comparative politics teaching.
Comparative Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: Partisan press systems versus the American professional-objectivity model; media self-selection and audience sorting; how officials think about which outlet reaches whom; public service broadcasting alongside an openly partisan print press.
Possible Uses in Classroom: Two minutes, no setup required, and it reliably produces the argument you want about whether an openly partisan press is more or less honest than one that claims neutrality. Good on the first day of a media unit in either an American or a comparative course.
Discussion Questions
- The scene sorts newspapers by who reads them rather than by what they report. What does that assume about the relationship between a paper and its audience, and does the assumption hold in the United States?
- Britain has an openly partisan national press alongside a public broadcaster with a statutory impartiality duty. What problem is that combination trying to solve, and does it solve it?
- The joke lands because each description is a stereotype the audience recognizes. What would the equivalent list look like for American outlets today, and what has changed since the scene was written that makes the exercise harder?
Assignment
Pick one week and one story covered on both sides of the Atlantic. Read the coverage in two British national papers of different political leanings and two American outlets. Two pages comparing not the slant but the conventions — where opinion sits relative to reporting, whether the paper tells you its own position, and how each expects to be read. Close by saying which system makes a reader’s job easier, and defend it against the obvious objection.
Clip hosted on YouTube, posted by BBC Studios.
For AP Students
AP Comparative Government and Politics
Unit 4: Party and Electoral Systems and Citizen Organizations
Topics: 4.5 Political Participation; 4.6 Social Movements; media and civil society in the six course countries
The United Kingdom is a core country and media systems are directly examinable. This is the clip that makes the partisan-press model intuitive in under two minutes.
Discussion questions
- Distinguish state-run media, state-influenced media, and a free press with partisan outlets. Place each of the six course countries in one of the three and defend the two hardest calls.
- A public broadcaster funded by the state is not the same as state media. Name the institutional features that make the difference, and say which of them is easiest for a government to erode quietly.
- Explain how media fragmentation affects the ability of a government to set the public agenda. Does it help an authoritarian regime, hurt it, or both?
Short activity
Sort the outlets (15 minutes). Name six real news outlets from three of the course countries, without saying which country each belongs to, and have students sort them into state-run, state-influenced and independent. Then reveal the answers. Spend the last five minutes on whichever one the room got wrong — the misclassification is usually the most instructive minute of the unit.