Tabloids are usually crammed with information, national and international news. Major headlines and stories of all sorts; political information from the government, also international news on everything important that has happened in the previous twenty-four hours. You often get emotional views of people’s life, if sometimes good or bad has happened to a famous person. You also get a biography or diary about someone’s life and how they lived, mostly successful people or important people who have died. Tabloids do tend to run sensational emotional stories.
Broadsheets are similar to tabloids, but most of the broadsheets present a more balanced view of the news. They fund to be not as sensational and more factual and informative.
Local papers have more pictures then any other kind of paper, they have more pictures of children, and the readers are able to see children of their own or children that they know of. In the most positive pictures you see children achieving or being brilliant. In some pictures you will see children as victims, but often they will have happy endings. They also show brave little angels that have helped their community and someone shown as accessories to local heroes or famous people e.g. David Beckham and his son’s Brooklyn and Romeo.
Tabloids often don’t have many pictures of children, and it is unusual to see a child achieving something in a tabloid. The international stories are often extreme and very emotive. The children are either devils or angels. Tabloids are biased and usually go for the bad points writing about crime stories or stories of violence and murder. Tabloids have sensational stories and banner headlines of children and it is difficult to actually work out the facts because they are clouded with the emotion of the victims.
Broadsheets are similar to tabloids, in that they have national and international news about children, but they don’t use children’s pictures because they don’t want the stories clouded with emotion. The broadsheets are usually more balanced and informative. They will only feature a photograph of a child to illustrate the event.
Newspapers use photographs and articles about children, to sell papers. They tend to stereotype children in a number of categories. The media create general images of children with the public. Local papers generally tend to promote positive images about children. In national stories the portrayed tends to be rather negative.
The media exercise has made me more aware of the kind of things going on in the world I live in. It has shown me how powerful the press can really be in promoting images of groups of people and how they ‘highlight’ certain kinds of stories. I understand how papers are different and it has definitely made me more aware of how readers can be influenced by what they read.
