Media Coursework - Analysis of Article in the Daily Mirror

    This article also preys on some people’s xenophobia against the French and shows a huge negative bias throughout, it doesn’t have many facts to prove that he was a drunk. Instead it uses dubious quotes to back up it’s story like: ‘he looked like a well pissed Groucho Marx’ and ‘I’ve known him to drink nine whiskies in one sitting’.

    The pictures in the Mirror’s article show a stunt motorcyclist riding away from what looks like an explosion this is a demeaning picture and portrays him as what they call a ‘speed freak’ and a ‘bike nut’. The other picture shows the smashed up Mercedes after the ‘90mph tunnel smash’ this picture is playing on peoples emotions and the British peoples prejudice and evokes a sense of anger and hatred for the French. The caption also evokes anger for Henri Paul and grievance for princess Di this backs up the whole article, which is negatively biased.

    There is also onomatopoeia used in this article like ‘smash’ and ‘crash’ this plays on the reader’s emotion and is used to create a picture of what the crash would have been like. Henri Paul is labelled with a lot of adjective tags like ‘speed freak’ and ‘party loving’ this highlights his supposed loutish and party loving attitude, this also plays again on the Brit’s xenophobic attitude to the French.

    Overall the article is negatively biased and prejudiced, Henri Paul has been used as a scapegoat to remove the blame from the security staff and other people involved. The onomatopoeic words, adjective tags and slang language all contribute to demeaning him and portraying him as a loutish hooligan and show the obsessions that he was supposed to have with speed and alcohol.

    The Guardian article is very different from the beginning