ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the current and past trends in relation to how journalists, and the news media in more general terms, provide news coverage of poverty and social exclusion. It explores the ways the mainstream news media report poverty and inequality while looking at comparative trends and issues. The chapter discusses how this coverage is shaped by history, individual ideologies and organisational cultures, and how the news coverage tends to be driven by ideology, structure and agency. It examines the historical context in which news on inequality and poverty developed over the years, while dissecting how this news coverage affects both the public imagination and political approaches to the problem.
