NSA Leaks. Guardian Vs The Daily Mail

Edward Snowden is a particularly hot topic at the moment and even despite the media coverage and commentary from all sides, both government, media and from the general public, is still a subject that will have huge ramifications with the future of intelligence services and transparency with the public.

I have chosen  two articles from The Guardian and The Daily Mail to illustrate the two newspapers different reporting styles, that give insight into their political ideologies and end goals. Both have vested interests in how to report the story. The Guardian at its heart is a left wing paper and makes no attempt to hide this fact, as also unashamedly The Daily Mail does not hide its right wing roots, indeed links to fascism in the 1930s prove this point but I digress... The Guardian has an interest to fight for transparency and the right for newspapers to print about what its government is going if it is in the public interest, The Daily Mail however has the opinion that it is dangerous to report on how our intelligence service works whether or not it is in the public interest.

Firstly simply taking a look at the two headlines each respective paper uses to head their articles the differences in tone and opinion is inconspicuous.

The Daily Mail ran with: 'Guardian has handed a gift to terrorists' warns MI5 chief: Left-wing paper's leaks caused 'greatest damage to western security in history say Whitehall insiders
Firstly they take a quote out of context to hammer home the danger of what the guardian is doing, simply paraphrasing from a speech the Mi5 chief gave, without presenting it in context. Describing the paper as 'left wing' is also an attempt to smear them as if they cannot be left wing and present a factual persuasive argument based on evidence. There is a sense of snobbery that right wing papers use to dismiss left wing papers as is evidence here.

The Guardian ran with: The Guardian in the firing line in coverage of Mi5 chiefs speech, a clear concise headline that deals with the facts, using language that is in no attempt meant to persuade and shows no sense of bias. Its a factual article that is designed to allow the reader to make up his or her own mind about the subject based on the evidence and facts in front of them. It's especially interesting because as mentioned the Guardian has an interest to fight for press freedom but the papers ideology is to present the facts as a newspaper should do. Present the news.

My own personal opinion on the matter is split. We do vote in a government and in doing so intrust them with protecting us, there are things that with public knowledge can endanger us and that is why we have security services to protect us, so in some sense I sympathise with The Daily Mail,  however lately with the amount of scandals and mistrust with governments, transparency is perhaps better, perhaps if our governments were more entrusting in us and allowed us to make up our minds on how we want to be protected and what freedoms we want, we could in turn trust them with our security.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450237/MI5-chief-Andrew-Parke-The-Guardian-handed-gift-terrorists.html

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/oct/09/theguardian-edward-snowden

Shimon Greenidge-Forsyth.