Paper Monitor
12:15 UK time, Thursday, 7 February 2008
A service highlighting the riches of the daily press
Skirting over the US elections (plenty of that ahead) and Amy Winehouse looking all buffed up, Paper Monitor is wondering what to make of all the good youth/ bad youth stories in today’s press.
Here, we are past Jacqui Smith’s worrying tipping point where more than half of 13-year-olds have drunk alcohol.
The qualities make large of the story, detailing the £875,000 campaign to dry out under-age drinking in public.
Whereas has the whole story nailed in three brief paragraphs on the inside of page 4.
Six times the space is given to the photo of the lion riding on a horse’s back in a Chinese circus. Along with , The Sun enjoys the spectacle of animal antics and tiger go-faster stripes while the prefers to measure the depths of animal humiliation the Chinese are plumbing.
A distraction - so anyway, back to British youth. The Mail emphasises Jacqui Smith’s observation that they tend to grow up into young adults with an appetite for destruction causing mayhem in town centres.
It’s certainly put off proper full blown adults wanting to mix with them at work. a dramatic drop in the number of people wanting to train as teachers.
Who can blame them not wanting to spend time with youths whose parents send them off with six packs of lager for the evening?
What’s gone wrong then? It’s meddling ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ bosses who are to blame for axing Grange Hill, of course. C³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ say children no longer define themselves by boring school life. The Sun says gangs start in school. and join the campaign to stop youth gang culture hogging the headlines!
Zammo (actor Lee MacDonald) frankly tells , if Grange Hill really showed what was going on in schools today, it would have to be on after the watershed.
Despite the ‘Bank raider aged five’ headline in the Mail, faith in the nation’s youth is restored by five-year-old Oliver Pettigrew who walked through an unlocked door into a rural branch of HSBC when it was closed. Upstanding Oliver alerted his parents who were using the cashpoint outside, and they phoned the police to come and lock the bank up. Paper Monitor knew the kids were alright.
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