You might think that the purpose of news stories is to tell us what has happened - to report the facts, but we have already seen that the way events are reported can make us feel certain things about the people involved. In other words the news is not reported neutrally. And anyway, who decides what should be reported?

Let's consider an example: say a newspaper's owner does not like comprehensive schools or their pupils and teachers. What if that owner believes that those schools are staffed by bad, lazy teachers, and that they are attended by bored and moronic pupils? His own children probably went to expensive private schools. If the editor of the paper simply expressed these beliefs in the comment section of the paper most readers would probably reject the beliefs as being too crude and extreme, but these ideas could be cunningly suggested to the reader in two other ways:

Firstly, the paper could report any stories it could find about disorder in comprehensive schools. Secondly, it could use emotive language about the pupils and teachers .

Look again at The Star report of the school 'riot' in Bideford. (Incidentally, why have I put inverted commas round 'riot'?)

• What impression of the pupils and the staff is given to the reader?
• Surely only moronic youngsters would riot simply because they were bored?
• When the refuse to do dinner duties and walk out aren't they behaving like two year-olds?
• Doesn't the powerless headmaster sound pathetic, especially when compared to the heroic police who easily calmed the rioters, even though they were frantic ?

The paper has not directly condemned pupils and teachers, but if its readers are already slightly biased towards comprehensives then their prejudices will have been confirmed or reinforced .

Below I have re-written The Star report in as neutral a way as I can manage. Would you agree that this version - Disturbance in Devon School - does not try to praise or blame anyone?

Most newspapers support the same political party most of the time. If you read their comment pages - particularly the editorials - then you will probably see which party they support.

• The Independent claims not to support any particular party, and many of The Guardian 's readers believe that it is also 'neutral', however readers of other newspapers generally believe it to be slightly 'left wing' (more towards Labour than Conservative). Do you think it is possible for a newspaper to be unbiased?

• Which political party a paper 'believes in' is usually quite clear, but other beliefs are not so easy to notice. Take any paper and ask yourself: what does it want you to believe about black people, women, Europe, equality, animals, teachers, housing estates, the unemployed and so on?

• The Sun is the best selling tabloid newspaper whilst The Times is a respected broadsheet. Do you think they would hold the same views about many things? Do you think that the people who own newspapers make a difference to the views they contain? ( The Sun and The Times are owned by the same person).

People have all sorts of beliefs about these things, and so do newspapers.

You should have now learnt that:

• Newspapers have ideas or beliefs about the things they write about.
• They convey those beliefs implicitly to their readers by choosing to report some things rather than others, and by the way reports are written.

Choose any newspaper and look through it, reading reports and comment columns. Try to work out what sort of things it wants its readers to believe. Starting with the comment columns might help you.

Try to work out how something that the paper believes in is reflected in its choice of news stories and in the style of its reporting. You might like to do this study with a partner.

Now do this:

Some people hate the tabloid papers (the small ones like The Sun and The Mirror) because they think that these papers encourage our lowest instincts: greed, hate, spite and so on. Every so often the tabloids are accused of having no morals at all, and being too willing to destroy celebrities' lives by publishing scandalous things about them. Certainly the tabloids seem to be obsessed with sex.

People who hate the tabloids often refer to them as the "gutter press". Why?

In the debate, two people should speak on each side. After they have made their prepared speeches, the chairperson then allows people to make comments from 'the floor', occasionally allowing one of the speakers to reply. Eventually the chairperson asks the speakers to make some final comments and then calls a vote to see which side has the more support.

To help you to think about your ideas read the poem called Gutter Press below. What is it about tabloid newspapers that the poet, Paul Dehn, is attacking?