Firstly, the BBC have wrote the article in a “typical BBC informative style,” displaying facts about the shooting rather than attempting to shock and concern the reader. The main view portrayed is seriousness of the actual shooting of Etem rather than the increase and seriousness of growing gun crime. This is shown as the article is very precise and detailed with the information on the shooting, “17 year old Etem Celebi was shot sitting on a wall near his home in the local council estate.”
The Mirror, attempts to render concern and shock in the readers of the article, using emotive language to help portray their views of an increase in gun crime due to gang disputes, rather than focussing on the shooting itself. This is shown through the briefness of the facts on the shooting, and choosing to pay more attention to the increase of gang disputes and gun crime overall in the UK. It seems as if The Mirror are only using the shooting of Etem as an example to back up their “opinion” whilst in my opinion the article had been created to sell.
I believe both articles contain a little evidence of bias, however I believe The Mirror to contain more as it is a tabloid. However, the BBC article contains the infamous tabloid “Sob Story,” titling “Family’s anguish!” using unofficial quotes from friends and family, this suggests maybe BBC’s conventional layout may not be as factual as it first seems. The Mirror article contains reliable quotes from official sources “A statement from Scotland Yard,” to help make the article seem more factual to readers. However, one reason I believe The Mirror’s article contains more bias, evidence of this is its’ attempt to make the victim seem as innocent as possible, “The shooting was like an execution,” “He was a good boy, never one to cause trouble.” whilst the BBC gives both sides of the argument, “He was seen handing a gun over a few months ago.”
I believe that the BBC’s article gave the better story, as even though a “sob story” was including, I believe their main focus was on the shooting itself and using both sides of the argument to support the article. Also the BBC’s article contained one small picture of Etem, whilst The Mirror uses a lot of pictures some with barely a link to story, to fill out the page, making the article brief, another method to entice readers to buy the newspaper.
My personal opinion on the shooting of Etem Celebi, is that more concern should be given to this increase in gun crime (4% in the last year alone). I believe these shootings are not publicised enough, many people have become bored and overlook headlines containing, “Another teen shot dead.” I also believe the death of Etem Celebi and other teenagers to be a major tragedy, however I am not sure many other people my age share this view, as they have not been directly affected.
I believe that the issues raised in these articles are of great importance, and in this certain case I believe investigators will continue to look for evidence to see whether the shooting was a gang issue, postcode rivalry or if Etem was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the wider scale of things, I believe that more actions will eventually be introduced in hope to lower gun crime as well as youth crime in general. These could include: More power for police, a form of harsher punishment for offending youths and a longer prison sentence for extreme cases, such as the shooting of Etem.