The headline of ‘The Sun’ is ‘Nurses back to make a killing’ this paper is less biased than the other two. Its secondary story is titled ‘well I’m bunkered’ which is a sports story. In this paper there isn’t much space devoted to the pictures. The two pictures that are there, tie along with the angle of the story. They are like police id photos and make the nurses look guilty.
‘The Mirror’s’ headline is ‘My darling Lucy is back’ its main focus is Lucille McLauchlan; there is no side headline. With ‘The Mirror’ the image is very different to that of ‘The Express’ or ‘The Sun’. The picture is very emotive. It pictures one of the nurses, Lucille McLauchlan is standing next to her husband and they look very happy.
The use of colour in ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ is bold and by using the bright bold colours it helps to attract the readers to the paper. The color photos help because it makes the paper look more exciting.
The main focuses on the front pages are the large bold headlines and the big pictures. They help draw the reader into the story and grab attention to the paper.
Each paper grabs the reader’s attention in a different way. In ‘The Express’ it’s the picture of Richard Branson, in ‘The Mirror’ its the large picture that goes with the bold title and in ‘The Sun’ the it’s the headline, with carefully chosen words, taking up the whole page and drawing you into the story.
In all three papers the headline’s font is bold and clear to read. The large headlines draw attention to the paper. ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ use the same font but in ‘The Express’ it is different. The font of ‘The Mirror’ and ‘The Sun’s’ headlines are sharp, clearly defined and large, also in the upper case. They have almost sharp edges to the font of the words unlike the font in ‘The Express’, which is softer and more elegant; I also find that particular font easier to read because its ‘kinder to the eyes’.
‘The Express’ has, like the others, also chosen to do a large eye catching headline. Unlike the other two they have chosen to make the space the headline fills smaller, although it still manages to catch your attention.
The languages of the headlines are completely different. ‘The Express’ tells us that ‘our girl is no killer’’ coming from one of the families of the two nurses, whereas ‘The Sun’ is saying ‘nurses back to make a killing’ making both nurses sound guilty, as if they are coming back to England to murder more people. What ‘The Sun’ actually means is that the nurses are about to make millions selling their stories to the newspapers. With this story its ironic that they are accusing the nurses of selling their story’s, when they are very likely to be the ones that buy it.
‘The Mirrors’ headline is emotive, ‘My darling Lucy is back’ it comes from the heart and it’s the husband’s point of view. The paper interviewed Grant and the interview runs along the lines of how happy he is that he and Lucy are able to spend ‘more than two minutes alone’. This article focuses on Lucy’s story and is all about her ordeal and the fact that Grant is going to celebrate her return with a ‘honeymoon and a bacon roll’. The murdered victim is only mentioned once and so is the other nurse. It makes you feel sympathetic for the husband although some of the content of the article is pointlessly put in, however it makes the story more personal. This is a story that appeals to the heart, and is much more emotive, rather that giving bare facts.
The only logo on ‘The Express’ is the one in its title, the knight with the shield and the spear. Its placed between the two words ‘The’ and ‘Express’. ‘The Mirror’ doesn’t have a logo in its title but the advert for the free Magnum uses the Magnum logo. ’The Sun’ doesn’t use any picture logos but you could say that the title of the newspaper in itself is a logo.
‘The Express’s’ only advert is the one devoted to selling future copies of the newspaper compared to ‘The Sun’, which has a large advert that tells us what is in the center pages of the paper. The newspapers probably have more adverts on the inside but on the front page there are no adverts.
The actual space devoted to the news article on each paper is minimal considering the space devoted to the pictures. ‘The Mirror’ and ‘The Sun’ both have very little space for the text of the items as both have large pictures. In ‘The Express’ there is a lot of space devoted to other articles as well as the headline story.
Broadsheets like ‘The Telegraph’ have a lot of reading on their front page. Usually two or three stories with a couple of pictures, this is because they are large papers (23” x 29.2”) and can fit more onto their pages.
The main point of each item is that the two nurses accused of killing a colleague have been brought back to the UK and ‘released’. All three newspapers write about the story in different angles. The suns front page takes the angle form the victim’s family. This means that the article is written in a less biased fashion on the other hand, both nurses have been made to look guilty through the way the front cover is portrayed.
To write this article ‘The Sun’ interviewed the victim’s family ‘Brother Frank said: “ I suppose they will make a 20 million dollar film…” Certain words from ‘The Sun’ like ‘clinchy’ make the nurses sound guilty, whereas the sentence from the express ‘suffered immense physical and mental stress as she faced the prospect of a public beheading’; sounds dramatic and would catch any readers eye.
‘The Express’ focuses on Deborah Parry’s story and her family insisting that she is innocent. Both ‘The Mirror’ and ‘The Express’ are telling the nurse’s side of the story. ’The Express’ advertises ‘Deborah Parry’s story’ which shows that they have interviewed her. ‘The Sun’ focuses on the slightly less biased story that the other two papers take and so it interviewed the victim, Yvonne Gilford’s, family.
The paragraphs in ‘The Mirror’ and ‘The Sun’ are about one sentence long, whereas in the express they are much longer and proper paragraphs. There are a lot of quotes that make up the articles on the front page, although I imagine that on the inside story there would be more of a story. In the way that they have written the articles it gives the readers a taste of the story that’s inside and makes them want to buy the paper and read on. This makes the front-page article sound slap-dash and bitty, with short sentence structures.
‘The Express’ and ‘The Mirror’ are very similar in the way that they attack the subject of the two nurses. They are sympathetic and are more factual than ‘The Sun’. The first paragraph of ‘The Express’ is very personal and fairytale sounding.
There is a slant to there way that the items are written. Both of the newspapers that focus on the nurses in person believe that they are innocent and glad to be home. ‘The Sun’ however is the most balanced because it doesn’t take the sides of either of the nurses; although it doesn’t accuse them of being guilty it does accuse them of making millions of pounds out of their ordeal. ‘The Mirror’ is the most biased because the murdered nurse is mentioned only once and so is Deborah Parry.
If I went to a news shop on the 21st may 1998 and looked at the papers I think that I would have chosen the sun because the headline is catchy and the colour would have also caught my eye. Now having read all three newspapers I would choose ‘The Express’. On the other hand, if I was given a larger range of papers I would choose a broadsheet.
‘The Express’ looks boring and colourless and even though it focuses on Deborah Parry I find it more believable than the others. It includes more facts even though it is a biased story. ‘Faced the prospect of a public beheading’ wasn’t included in either of the other two papers and even though the story isn’t as slap-dash as the others, it’s a little over dramatic.
A broadsheet however, would have a lot more facts and be less biased towards the separate parties. It would most likely include interviews from both sides. As this would be classed as a major story it would be a pretty long front-page article.
Even though all the tabloids tell the story in some form, I feel that they aren’t always true. So to get a non-biased view with reading only one paper on that day, I would turn to a broadsheet.
Re-write this article as a tabloid press piece.
Original Broadsheet article
Golf tragedy
A boy age 13 died five days after being hit in the nose with a golf club swung by his friend. Scott greenway had a heart attack during surgery after he had gone to hospital to have treatment for his persistent nose bleed. An inquest in Bristol recorded a verdict of accidental death
My Tabloid Article
Boy, 13, Tragically Killed in golfing accident
Some call it a premature death for poor thirteen-year-old Scott Greenway.
Tragically he was hit in the nose as he played golf on the local course with his friend.
“Scott was standing behind me, giving me some tips and as he stepped away, I swung the club back, it hit him in the nose.” We interviewed Scott’s friend who caused this accident.
Poor bleeding Scott was rushed to hospital where five days later he was able to have an operation to stop his persistent nosebleed. As his anxious parents patiently stood by the theater, the result came back that Scott had died from a heart attack, while under the cruel surgeons knife.
Later on, after an inquest where two sobbing parents had broken down, it came back that the Bristol police had recorded Scott’s tragic violent death as an accident.
