On the other hand The Daily Express is a very modern, colourful daily tabloid paper, which contains a very wide variety of reports and stories on a range of subjects like celebrities, showbiz, politics, world events sports etc, it only has one story on the front page but has a large strip advertising another story/report/review/poster/competition that is featured inside the paper, it has a very big headline that takes up a significantly large amount of the page and a single image, the daily express only has 2/3 columns of short text and is very straight and to the point, it has a large target audience of younger modern working class people interested in showbiz, celebrities, the media, sports and politics.
It gives short but detailed information about its main story so that people going to work can quickly understand what may have happened by reading the 2/3 small paragraphs of text, to a certain extent the daily express also allows readers to make up their own mind about a story; it is a right wing conservative supporting paper.
The le-pen story
The Guardian
In the guardian paper we find a long (but small font sized) heading reading “From farce to violence as far-right le pen shares a platform with BNP leader” this is quite a detailed two line heading giving a lot of information in itself, telling us that there has been a ridiculous situation in which violence has occurred during a meeting between Mr Le pen and the BNP leader, the way in which the heading has been put together is specifically aimed at the target audience mentioned earlier (mature and intellectual men and women) , good grammatical words, such as farce and violence have been specially put in to draw readers in to find out what has happened, it is quite an accurate comment to say that the British public want to hear about any violence, problems, disorder, chaos etc, so the words farce and violence pull of this clever stunt to draw readers in.
As far as the actually story is concerned the paper decided to carry on going down the line of reporting about a mockery, instead of reporting about the arrival of Le pen, the whole of the story on the front page (consisting of 5 columns) is dedicated in illustrating what a shambles the event was, and words like “comic book secrecy” “scuffle” and “idiots” get this over quite well, the paper obviously decided to have the anti-racist and anti-Le pen view, as we and the guardian know more members of the public are against Le-pen than members of the public with him and the BNP, so sticking with the majority will increase the guardian sales,
Whether they are the true views the paper holds or whether it is just another stunt made by the guardian to draw readers in will remain unknown.
The paper decided to have one very rare image of Mr Le pen on the front page looking very disorganised and upset he has a very miserable frown on his face and the image has been taken while he looks to be adjusting his glasses which again adds to the image that the guardian tries to create that the BNP and MR Le pen are a shambles that they are disorganised, incompetent and ineffective people, the guardian also has a animation on the front page of Mr le pen and the BNP leader in which the BNP leader says “thank you Mr Le pen now go back where you came from”, which also adds to the idea of the whole event being a joke, but this also tries to slur the views the BNP hold that only White British born people belong in the UK. A quote taken form the text which reads “security measures had been imposed from higher up” also mocks the event showing that the BNP press officer just blamed the whole fiasco on everybody “higher up than him”.
The event is also shown to be a fiasco as the paper exaggerates about how the venue was kept secret and journalists were told to convene at a mysterious location: “the car park of the stationary shop office world near Didsbury”, the report continued on the next page consist of one large column and 4 very short columns, on this page the Guardian writes more about the actual conference than the shambles earlier on, writing about the fact that the conference was more business like and that things had calmed down., though it does end talking about the large protests saying “Mr Le pens car was greeted by a hail of eggs rocks and waste bins” and also giving a quote by an anti-racism leader.
The second page has a very large image of Mr Le pens car having a hail of eggs rocks and waste bins thrown at it and shows the lack of control there had been of the situation. Overall the paper definitely decided to report more about a shambles rather than a visit by a French racist having a particular bias towards Mr Le pen and also the BNP. Which probably means the paper sold more papers than it would have, had it gone down the line of reporting more about Le pen’s visit on a neutral level.
The daily Express
The daily express was rather alike as far as the story it told is concerned and the side it took, however the way in which the story was put across, the audience it was prepared for, and the detailed it specified differed from that of the Guardian.
The daily express has what some would say is a less intellectual younger modern working class audience and therefore the detail and grammatical level of the story is different from that of the guardian. Here the express has a gigantic heading reading “stop le Nazi!” (And you can imagine how big those three words would have to be to take up almost half of the front page), the express uses this clever heading to make out that the British public must stick together with high community spirits (maybe like those portrayed in British papers during world war 1/2) and get rid of this Nazi- who in this case is Jen Marie Le pen they further emphasise this view by using another fairly large heading cleverly produced reading “Brits: throw out this racist rabble-rouser”. This in itself also portrays the view of togetherness and community spirit.
Then the express uses a clever image of le pen being jostled while trying to get in his car, the image shows the fact that he is not wanted and unlinked as protesters in the back are shouting anti Le Pen slogans.
The Express unlike the guardian has 2 short paragraphs of text which quickly get over the story which is more occasionally to a reader who is getting late for work, the text informs the reader of the violence that had erupted as Le-pen made a controversial visit to Britain and gives a quotation reading “le pen described the holocaust as a detail of history” to inform the reader what le pen is like in the papers view. It then smoothly moves on to reporting the protest and how rocks and eggs were hurled at Le pen, while the police struggled to regain control. On the next page the Express has more detailed information about the whole event and has another 2 headlines, 3 images and 3 long columns of text.
The headlines now emphasise the strong opposition the public has towards Le Pens visit with large headings reading “poison Le pen” and “crowds scream Nazi scum at racist leader”, two very sharp and eye catching pictures of the demonstrations showing Le Pens car being hurled with rubbish and bin bags, and a woman screaming her head of while police try to keep control are shown to add more confirmation to the fact that “LE PEN IS A RASICT AND HE IS NOT WANTED BY THE BRITISH PUBLIC” (as far as the daily Express is concerned anyway) the paper persists with the anti Le pen idea and writes as to how many people were shocked as to the fact Le pen was allowed in the UK and that the general sectary had warned he would be arrested if he in sighted racial hatred.
It is not difficult to work out the Daily Express held a particular bias towards Le Pen and decide to go down the route of the infamous motto “all for one and one for all” meaning that everyone should stick together and get this dire man out of the country and they managed to represent this idea well in the story. (Out of interest however the Daily express did not write much about the mayhem that was caused by the BNP).
