Transition Year students can win a week's work placement in The Irish Times. Send us your thoughts (200 words maximum) on a media-related topic - if your submission is published, the placement is yours.
Jane Downes, Mount Sackville Secondary School, Chapelizod, Dublin
TV3 has failed to mark its arrival on the scene with any major impact. It is the second launch of a new television station in the last three years - the first being the channel referred to in broadcasting circles as "the secret service". (You know what I'm talking about - it's TnaG, the rivetting visual version of Raidio na Gaeltachta.) I was bitterly disappointed at the lack of support given to TV3 by the other forms of media. It seems every magazine and newspaper has found it appropriate to shatter TV3's "hip and trendy" image. In my opinion, these outlets do not have a leg to stand on. Instead, they should be supporting, possibly advising, the new broadcasting team in its progress towards being an established and respected station. I believe TV3 has increased the opportunities for the vast numbers of wannabe presenters, producers and directors. Its opening is itself a sign of Ireland's thriving economy.
Why do other channels insist on stifling its development? They are following in the grand tradition of Irish media in highlighting the negative aspects of everything. I think TV3's rivals are less worried about the quality of broadcasting and more concerned with the amount of money finding its way into their pockets.
Edward O'Donovan, Gonzaga College, Dublin
Students of the media know how to draw the distinction between what the people want and what they need from the news. The media itself, however, has begun to give people what they desire rather than what is necessary. Tabloids have always provided people with scandal and other news which they enjoy reading about but which doesn't interfere with their everyday lives. However, broadsheets too, in certain circumstances, have broken the "rules" of quality reporting and have gone into overdrive in reporting sensational stories and basically anything else the public is fascinated by.
Examples include their behaviour in the month after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales; more recently, even the most intimate details of President Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky made nearly every front page in the western world for a succession of days. Has not Irish Times reporter Kathy Sheridan put it all in a nutshell? She writes: "The upshot of the new media `rules' forged by an industry driven downward by competition in prurient curiosity is that we now know far more about people's tawdry sex lives than we want to or need to."
Write to media scope by posting your comments to Newspaper in the Classroom, The Irish Times, 11-16 D'Olier Street, Dublin 2, or faxing them to (01) 679 2789. Be sure to include your name, address and school, plus phone numbers for home and school.
Or you can use the Internet and e-mail us at mediapage@irish-times.ie.
media scope is a weekly media studies page for use in schools. Group rates and a special worksheet service are available: FREEPHONE 1-800-798884 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). media scope is edited by Harry Browne.
