Wednesday 27 February 2008

media guardian story

The advertising watchdog has cleared a Setanta TV ad campaign featuring Des Lynam despite 36 complaints that it degraded women by referring to breasts as puppies.
Setanta's "Setanta Claus" ad featured Lynam dressed in a yellow Santa suit in a grotto, while his scantily clad helper "Tinseltoes" - Big Brother's Thaila Zucchi - flashed her cleavage.
This prompted a male visitor to the grotto to grin, stare and absentmindedly mention a "couple of puppies".
The Advertising Standards Authority received 36 complaints that the ad was offensive as it objectified and degraded women and was sexist.
Nine of the complainants also argued that the Santa theme would be of interest to children and that such an ad should not be broadcast before 9pm.
Setanta disagreed, arguing that it was a "light hearted, humorous production, targeted not at men, but at the female partners of male football fans".
The Irish pay-TV company said that the use of the scantily clad Zucchi was an "integral part of the narrative".
Setanta added that the "mildly saucy" presentation of the ad was "entirely in keeping with the theme and the UK's tradition of double entendre humour in advertising".
The ASA noted that some viewers might see the portrayal of Zucchi with her cleavage on display as objectifying women and that the reference "Give him what he wants this Christmas" could be seen by some as treating women as sex objects.
However, it decided that most viewers would see it as "mild sexual innuendo" that was unlikely to provoke serious or widespread offence.
The ASA also rejected the nine complaints that the ad was unsuitable for children and should not be shown before 9pm.
It concluded that the ad, which aired with a restriction not to be shown around programmes targeted at children, had enough differences from a real Christmas scene - such as Lynam dressed in Setanta yellow - that children would know the difference.
The ASA also said children would not understand the double entendre messages in the ad and "take them at face value".
Setanta's ad was cleared by the ASA.

media guardian story

The advertising watchdog has cleared a Setanta TV ad campaign featuring Des Lynam despite 36 complaints that it degraded women by referring to breasts as puppies.
Setanta's "Setanta Claus" ad featured Lynam dressed in a yellow Santa suit in a grotto, while his scantily clad helper "Tinseltoes" - Big Brother's Thaila Zucchi - flashed her cleavage.
This prompted a male visitor to the grotto to grin, stare and absentmindedly mention a "couple of puppies".
The Advertising Standards Authority received 36 complaints that the ad was offensive as it objectified and degraded women and was sexist.
Nine of the complainants also argued that the Santa theme would be of interest to children and that such an ad should not be broadcast before 9pm.
Setanta disagreed, arguing that it was a "light hearted, humorous production, targeted not at men, but at the female partners of male football fans".
The Irish pay-TV company said that the use of the scantily clad Zucchi was an "integral part of the narrative".
Setanta added that the "mildly saucy" presentation of the ad was "entirely in keeping with the theme and the UK's tradition of double entendre humour in advertising".
The ASA noted that some viewers might see the portrayal of Zucchi with her cleavage on display as objectifying women and that the reference "Give him what he wants this Christmas" could be seen by some as treating women as sex objects.
However, it decided that most viewers would see it as "mild sexual innuendo" that was unlikely to provoke serious or widespread offence.
The ASA also rejected the nine complaints that the ad was unsuitable for children and should not be shown before 9pm.
It concluded that the ad, which aired with a restriction not to be shown around programmes targeted at children, had enough differences from a real Christmas scene - such as Lynam dressed in Setanta yellow - that children would know the difference.
The ASA also said children would not understand the double entendre messages in the ad and "take them at face value".
Setanta's ad was cleared by the ASA.

The Guardian vs Daily Express

Similarities and differences between “Daily Express” and “The Guardian”

One of the more obvious differences between the two newspapers is the amount of text used on the front page. The Daily Express has more text in relation to lottery winners and a big headline taking up most of the page. The guardian however has a lot more text actually covering the news. The font is quite small and there is a lot of text, this shows the amount of news being covered.

The news the guardian presents is to do with international and global affairs such as a column on solar energy and also on Bhutto’s death, her story is dealt with in a sympathetic way and the image shown makes her appear as someone of high importance. Her death is not merely passed off as just a death but more of a martyrdom.
The daily express however, displays a picture of Holly Willoughby’s sporting a revealing outfit on the TV show “dancing on ice”. This story is not what the average reader would expect to see on a front page as it is not of much importance, it could simply be a way to attract an audience.

The main headline on the daily express reads, “MUSLIM PLOT TO BEHEAD BRITON” immediately the reader will notice, “Muslim/Briton” and notice a clash between the two. The Muslim is portrayed as the “other” and is also labelled as a fanatic, this reinforces the stereotypical view that many people have about Muslims and blatantly puts Muslims down whilst in the guardian Benazir Bhutto is show a certain amount of
Respect without any racial tension or moral panic presented.

The general presentation is very different between the two, the guardian appears as though it is packed with information due to the small font but huge amounts of text. The font looks sophisticated, lightly bold and is not too, “in your face”.
The daily express however, relies on big and bold font to fill up the space on the front page. The font is very big and loud and demands a reader, also it employs the use of yellow to jump out of the page more.

Both the newspapers have completely different beliefs, it appears that the daily express aims simply to entertain by covering stories to do with celebrities and to a lesser extent gossip, whilst the guardian thinks it’s more important to educate the world about the world. The guardian is obviously more of an appropriate newspaper due to what it covers however some may argue that their kind of news Is not about foreign affairs and that they would rather read about internal affairs.

media guardian story

Cable operator Virgin Media's broadband and video-on-demand services crashed last night, leaving an unspecified number of its 3.6 million customers temporarily without facilities including internet access.The problem, which Virgin Media said accidentally occurred during "routine maintenance", primarily affected customers in the north-west, Yorkshire and the Midlands.Virgin Media's broadband and VOD services went down not long after 9pm last night."At 9.20pm last night, customers in a number of regions temporarily lost connectivity to their broadband and video-on-demand services," said Virgin Media."This occurred as a result of an error during a routine maintenance process which affected some customers' modems and set-top boxes."Virgin added that the "majority" of affected customers regained their service "shortly after midnight".However, as the restoration process was handled in waves, the problem was not completely fixed in all areas until after 10am today.VOD services were the simplest to restore, while some broadband customers in formerTelewest regions had the longest wait, said a Virgin Media spokeswoman."Our engineers are currently working to restore the few remaining connections as quickly as possible," said the company. "We apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused. Broadcast television and telephone services were unaffected."Virgin added that it was not yet possible to state exactly how many customers had been affected."As the loss was temporary and not a network outage, it is difficult to establish the exact scale of the affected customers," the company said. "Some customers may have noticed a loss of service as short as a few minutes, many may not have seen any loss of service at all, depending on when they were online."

Media guardian story

The News of the World's new glossy magazine, Fabulous, will be linked to an online shop when it launches this weekend.Readers will be able to "click and buy" frocks and other items from more than 450 brands featured in Fabulous's celebrity fashion shoots through an interactive shopping function on the fabulousmag.co.uk site.Fabulous will replace the paper's Sunday magazine in the biggest shakeup since the supplement was launched in the 1980s, spearheaded by the deputy editor, Jane Johnson."This is the first time a publisher has tackled the difficult task of fully integrating and cross-referencing from magazine to e-commerce site," said Lara Kelly, the News International head of e-commerce."The final product is a fully interactive experience for readers and online users to enjoy, driving traffic and transactions."The e-commerce service was built by Pixsta, a visual browser company that operates next-generation shopping engines for media owners globally."Credit goes to the Fabulous team for tackling this new era of online publishing head on," said Steve Dukes, the Pixsta commercial director."We look forward to enabling the Fabulous user base, with the ability to shop from over online 450 brands, offering exclusive discounted prices, updated daily