Newspapers all appeal to a certain age, class or profession of person. The Mirror is a typical tabloid paper; most tabloid papers are aimed at an average age working class people usually with manual jobs such as bin men, lorry drivers or cleaners etc, with interests such as football or rugby. Every newspaper is aimed at a certain reading age but it is not always necessarily aimed at that particular age for example The Mirror is aimed at readers that are fourteen plus but has a reading age of seven plus. Likewise the telegraph is also aimed at a certain class or age but this is different to that of the mirror. The Telegraph is a typical broadsheet paper. It is aimed at higher class people such as legal professionals or business people, again it has a reading age of ten plus but is aimed at people who are about eighteen plus who may be interested in stocks shares and have a strong interest in politics.
The Telegraph uses more complex vocabulary than The Mirror; it uses words such as ‘non-negotiable’ and ‘deployment’ to cater for the intelligence of their readers. The sentences in The Telegraph tend to be complex sentences with an average word count of seventeen words per sentence. The Telegraph uses more technical jargon than The Mirror for example The Telegraph refers to the planes as ‘harrier gr7`s’ but The Mirror calls them fixed ‘wing aircrafts.’ The Mirror used more emotive and sensational language than The Telegraph for example the opening paragraph read ‘TEENAGE sailors’ who have ‘never been away from home’ the aim of this is to create sympathy for the reader. The article also describes tearful parents who say goodbye.
In spite of both articles being of the same topic their tone is very different. The tone of the mirror is emotive, patriotic and partly informative, whereas The Telegraph is political, informative and factual. The tone of the telegraph also reflects the subject matter as it is about teenagers going away to fight. The tone of the telegraph also reflects the subject matter as it is about the fire fighters wanting to strike when the country is going to war.
Every newspaper is biased towards a side in any subject matter. They are biased towards a political party; in some newspapers this is more obvious than others. The Daily Telegraph article’s title ‘firemen to strike as troops set sail,’ shows that the paper is biased towards the troops. It shows that the paper doesn’t agree with the firemen striking because it compares the action of the firemen with the action of the troops. Like The Telegraph The Mirror is also biased towards the troops as they make the reader feel sympathy for the ‘teenage sailors.’ The Mirror has more opinions than facts but they cleverly try to disguise opinions as facts this is obvious in the opening paragraph as it says ‘teenage sailors who have never been on ship or away from home for a long time’ this is not true as they can’t possibly know that about every individual aboard the ship. With the telegraph being a more formal paper there are a lot more facts than opinions. The two papers give ‘facts’ on how many cigarettes were boarded on the ship; The Telegraph said’1000`000 cigarettes’ were boarded whereas The mirror said 1 million cigarettes were boarded.
The Daily Telegraph has quotes from Andy Gilchrist and one humorous quote from captain Alan Massey. The Mirror has a lot more quotes a few from Alan Massey but a number from females aboard the ship to create sympathy, towards the sailors. The Telegraph uses both direct and indirect speech.
The message in The Daily Telegraph is that the firemen shouldn’t strike when there may be a possible war. The Mirror is trying to say that we are not prepared for war that’s why ‘the brave teenage sailors’ are going for us, and we should feel grateful and sympathy for them.
I preferred The Mirror as there was less technical jargon and it was a lot easier to understand.