Please let The Sun go down! (The Sun)

Member Name: G-TOP3

Product:	The Sun
Date:	21/05/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Light entertainment

Disadvantages: Unbalanced views, too dumbed down

The sun was the first newspaper i started to buy regularly when i was a teenager. I very much enjoyed its light content and the sport section with its football transfer rumours.

It wasn't until i started reading other newspapers, that i realised The sun should be firmly seen as entertainment rather than journalism. Before i go on, i realise that people know the paper is a tabloid and that by its very nature can be a little vague with the truth and certainly not particularly balanced in its treatment of subjects.

The most disturbing element of the paper is its propensity to assume a position on a moral high ground on particularly sensitive topics which are never black or white. While not criticising's a paper's right to freedom of speech, i do believe that journalism carries a certain amount of responsibilty. My fear is that people who only read the Sun can have their own views coloured by what they read, and the paper's tendency to over simplify topics and create a moral crusade is quite dangerous.

I don't doubt the intelligence of the Sun journalists, and know of a friend who writes for the Times who sometimes is asked to do a piece for the sun, and is asked to dumb down his writing. People like Richard Littlejohn and Trevor Kavanagh in the past have created successful careers for themselves on the basis of their controversial and unbalanced views.

I realise that the paper is supposed to be a tabloid, and a light touch, but if its viewed as a front runner in british journalism due to its popularity, it can be quite a dangerous paper.

Summary: As a daily edition of Heat magazine its fine, but otherwise steer clear.