Are you interested in one week's work placement in The Irish Times? Transition Year students can learn firsthand about the workings of this newspaper if their submission is published in Media Scope's weekly Over to You column. Just send us a 200-word piece on a media-related topic.
Stephen English, De La Salle College, Dundalk, Co Louth
I am - like half the country - a Celtic fan, and as a result I was deeply disappointed to find out that last Sunday's Old Firm game was available here on a pay-per-view (ppv) basis only. BBC Scotland got free-to-air coverage, yet BBC Northern Ireland only got an "extended highlights" programme.
This is a massive double standard: as Sky Digital subscribers, we were promised all the big games live - now, as I am sure the readers agree, they don't come much bigger than Celtic v Rangers.
I know thousands paid for the game, but at £7.95 I didn't pay. What might happen now is that we will pay to see the World Cup final soon enough. Whoever in the name of Henrik Larsson (i.e. God) would even think of putting a game that could decide the destination of the Scottish Premier League on ppv must have lost sight of the fact that it was cheaper to go to the pub.
Ah but what do I know? The people at Sky TV must know better then me!
Marie O'Sullivan, St Mary's Secondary School, New Ross, Co Wexford
As a 15-year-old girl, the most important things in my life are boys, clothes, make-up and hairstyles - or so the patronising excuses for teen magazines try to tell me. Can the producers of these magazines seriously believe that such literature is educational, or do they actually believe that teenage girls are so pathetic that we spend our time fixing our hair, trying on make-up and worrying about what clothes boys want to see us in?
It is so frustrating to read articles they publish on anorexia or the like, and then to see the hypocrisy, when all photographs they publish are of size-8 models. This tells the majority of growing girls that they are not normal!
Young teenage women are impressionable but not stupid - not all of us care which celebrity is going out with whom. Not all of us are satisfied with trivial rubbish. We may be the generation of tomorrow, but it would help if we knew what was happening today.
Write to media scope by posting your comments to Newspaper in the Classroom, The Irish Times, 1116 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@irishtimes.ie
media scope is a weekly media studies page for use in schools.
Faxback: Worksheets and other materials are available to teachers who place group orders through their schools. The worksheets are sent to all subscribing schools via the automatic faxback system. This system will re-try an engaged line up to four times.
If you do not receive material by Wednesday morning, and you have a touchtone fax machine, please use it to dial (01) 670 9709. Follow the recorded instructions and material will be faxed to your machine. If you have a pulse-dialling machine, refer to your fax manual for details on how to set it for touchtone dialling. If you have problems, telephone (01) 679 2022, ext 8568 or 8580.
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media scope is edited by Harry Browne.
