Essay for Interview-I think I'm going about it in the wrong way

I've got an interview at my first choice University and I have to write a 500 word commentary like piece from a national newspaper on this question:

The Question

In the light of the reporting leading up to the war with Iraq, do you think that the media are to blame for the diminishing trust people are said to have for politicians?

I know my opinion but I just can't seem to make it fit....I write something and it's really good but it just doesn't seem to have my fingerprint on it. I was trying to write it in an objective format such as the Express or Guardian, but maybe I should try something populist as the Sun, it'd be more difficult but my style of writing is more accustomed to populist rags.
Do you think that this is the right way of going about it?

Reply 1

GH

13

Post us the article that you have currenlty done

Reply 2

Danithestudent

OP

10

OK it's a bit jumbled...and different from the last one I wrote

In recent years, there have been many surveys about whom people find the least trustworthy. Lawyers, Second-hand car dealers, estate agents and particularly politicians, have ranked rather high on the list. Politicians have always had an air of mistrust surrounding them. Many of them have our freedoms within their grasp and this causes us to be rather wary of them, even if we did vote for them in the first place.

Politicians have access to intelligence reports, that most of the nation could not even imagine and in the lead up to the Iraqi war, these intelligence reports doubled. The thing about intelligence is that it is top secret. We can’t let them know that we know. The British public aren’t told a lot of things when it comes to intelligence, mainly for their own safety and for us to have the upper-hand against whoever it is. Because of this, when things happen and politicians conclude they had received intelligence reports about it, people get angry and wonder why they hadn’t been warned. This causes a deep mistrust.

The media always try to answer all the questions, find out everything they can from politicians in order to inform the public. However with the amount of information held top secret, people often only get half of the picture, which causes it to be distorted.

When Hans Blix and his team of experts reported back from Iraq that they had not discovered any weapons of mass destruction, the country was sceptical. If they aren’t usually told what is really going on, how could they trust what was being said about this. We had seen the attacks in Bali, New York and Washington, we wanted to know if Saddam Hussein had been supplying Al-Qaeda. We doubted that they would tell us.

The Labour Government, headed with Tony Blair is a new breed of Government. This Government has a team of very dedicated “spin-doctors”, attempting to justify every action that the Government makes. The Government makes a lot of decisions that we don’t like but are necessary, they were voted in telling us they were going to sort out the NHS, improve education and yet they’ve not managed to uphold their promises. This causes more of the mistrust that we have for them.

The media are often blamed for warping what people say, taking things into a different context and changing situations into something different. So surely many people could believe that the diminishing trust people are said to have for politicians could spiral from this. However, I believe that the media are not to blame. It’s shooting the messenger.
The politicians are indeed the ones that are causing the lack of trust towards themselves but not on purpose. People have expectations when they vote in politicians and when they aren’t met the trust is broken or at least knocked down a few pegs. The media merely question things and often bring to view a few things that the public and politicians had missed.

Reply 3

GH

13

I don't know if it is me or not, but the tone of the piece, is a bit patronising. If it was based on like an article from the guardian Times etc, then the readers themselves should surely have an above average knowledge etc.

Currently the piece is targetting papers such as Mail/Mirror type pieces. All good.

Reply 4

Danithestudent

OP

10

2776

I don't know if it is me or not, but the tone of the piece, is a bit patronising. If it was based on like an article from the guardian Times etc, then the readers themselves should surely have an above average knowledge etc.

Currently the piece is targetting papers such as Mail/Mirror type pieces. All good.

Yeah, I think I'm going to rewrite it twice, one in the style of the Sun and the other of like the Guardian...that way I have a bigger choice if you catch my drift... I'm off to the pub...

Reply 5

GH

13

Danithestudent

I'm off to the pub...

No doubt to ruminate over the subject matter.

Reply 6

ogs

um patronising but informative if you have never read anything about it!... but which uni is this for?

Reply 7

Danithestudent

OP

10

The London College of Printing (or Communication...it's all mixed up) for Journalism

Reply 8

Danithestudent

OP

10

Politicians lie, fact. Other examples of such certainties are, people die, Santa doesn’t exist and Jim being incapable of fixing it. Nowadays, people have an increasingly deep distrust for “politicians” and although it seems to be becoming more apparent why, it’s not a new idea. Since the invention of government, people have disagreed with what they say, the actions they take and the expensive wallpaper they spend our taxes on. So when the issue of war with Iraq came up, the public were sceptical of what the politicians were saying.

"We have reason to believe that Saddam Hussein is supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorist networks...” that’s what was said. They “believe” that he had them, despite having millions of pounds invested in a satellite that could read a newspaper headline off a street in London from space. They couldn’t actually find them; they just believed he had them. That wasn’t going to sit well with the CND and
anti-war supporters who weren’t big fans in the first place.

It was dangerous territory. They could increase tax, annoy us by making us spend six pence extra a year. They could invest in more speed cameras but they were talking about taking troops into battle, people’s lives. Partners, parents, children and make them cannon fodder for this monster the media and government had created. Was it really worth it for something that was “believed”?

So when public support wasn’t as high as they’d wanted, the media were blamed. The BBC "poisoning" the British public with their conscientious objectors’ beliefs. They painted a picture of a political system that was full of corruption and heresy. It just wasn’t “British” (or “European”, or whatever club Tony Blair wanted to join that
week).

The media, in the interest of “informing” the people and increasing their circulation, highlighted the downfalls of the government and questioned every choice they made. (If it’s not hard enough running a country and preparing for a war you have to have the world’s press on your back as well!)

So who was to blame for the trust in politicians taking a dive? Was it the government themselves? The government are very good at shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to certain aspects, but they’re probably less corrupt than hundreds of years ago. They have to be careful nowadays because the press watch their every move. The
media? The media would be one of the obvious suspects. Digging up anything to sell papers, but the papers wouldn’t say anything untrue. There are laws; they can’t print anything that was just made up. What about the public? With threats of terrorism, Al-Qaeda and other unspeakable terrors fuelled by the government and media, no wonder we were losing trust in those that control us. To a certain extent the media were to blame for the diminished trust in politicians, but they could only be guilty for placing the evidence into the public domain for us to make our own assumptions.

Essay for Interview-I think I'm going about it in the wrong way

Related discussions

Latest

Trending

Trending

Articles for you