When people are deciding which paper to buy on a Sunday morning, they will be attracted by such offers and also by hints on the front page about what is inside. The cover of the Times leads with photographs of a singer, an actor, a politician, two actresses, two footballers, and a popular disc jockey who has just died. It is interesting that the actress pictured at the top of the page is wearing a low-cut dress. Glamorous women attract female as well as male readers, even Times readers who are generally from the higher class groups. Obviously, Times readers are just as interested in movies and sport as they are in beautiful women. As there is a savings plan advert it looks as if the readers are richer than most.
The Express, makes room for only two photographs. Kilroy-Silk, at the top, is a TV celebrity and politician who has appeared for years on morning television. His picture will help sell the paper to the female market. The eye-catching photograph of Jemima Khan is also there to sell the paper.
I am now going to write about the articles themselves. What is striking about the Express is that there is only the beginning of an article on its front page - just 34 words in fact. Almost half of the page is taken up with the headline ‘Aspirin harms unborn babies’. This is a sensational headline intended to scare female readers into buying the paper to read the whole article. Pregnant women fear having a deformed baby most. If such shocking headlines did not sell newspapers then the Express would not print them. This tells me that many of us are very easily persuaded, especially by what we read in papers. Few readers will notice that the key words harms unborn babies are in inverted commas meaning that this is just a report, not a proven fact. In this way, the Express cannot be accused of scaring their readers in order to sell papers.
The scare factor is there again in the smaller headline about Jemima Khan. We will have to turn to page 17 to read the story, but here on the front page we are told that her children were ‘caught up in an armed robbery’. Fear of crime and fear that your children will be affected is something to think about on a long, lazy Sunday. It is a common fear in Britain today, with gun crime and the fear of terrorism increasing every day. Playing on these fears sells papers.
The front page of the much bigger Times is very different. There are three complete articles, and one article which continues inside, on the front page. None of these stories, though, describes anything that has come up in the news on the previous day. They are more like magazine articles. We are told that the government is considering a quick election, that the Queen has applied for permission to build a hydro-electric plant to provide power for Windsor castle, that the country’s chief judge is so angry with the Home Secretary that he is going to resign, and that the Prime Minister and his wife are being accused of trying to avoid paying British tax by putting their money overseas.
My conclusion is that the Times and the Express are aiming at different groups of people. The Express wants to attract women readers with catchy headlines and simple if sensational text. The Times leads with long articles in small print aimed at those who have the time and interest to sit down, read and reflect on issues.
The many newspapers on sale on Sundays are in competition with one another, but each has its own natural readership. There are similarities and differences between them all. But an outsider would form a different view about British culture, our way of life and our national interests, if she were to see the front pages of the Sunday Sport and the News of the World rather than the Express and the Times. For a more complete view of British culture, she needs to peruse all the front pages on a Sunday morning.
