All of the guidelines help to give a broader picture to the way in which this article has been structured and shaped into the piece that was published in the Mirror on February 25th 1999.
The article is placed in the upper left-hand corner of page 8, of the popular daily tabloid ‘The Mirror’. The title is directly underneath the page number, name and date. The article is text-boxed in a fine line this gives the impression that the article is separate from the rest of the page. The article is 145mm by 75mm and broken down into 13 short paragraphs. The title of the article is in uppercase and in bold ‘Arial’ font, the approximate size of the font is 42 case. The title, that leaves little to the imagination, takes up 48mm of the entire text-box and yet the article hardly stands-out on the page. The surrounding features are not crime related. There is a half page satirical spread and an advertisement, the severity of the piece is lost in the fact that the article is on page 8 and is not in a section that would be automatically associated with the nature of the article.
With the use of the word ‘rape’, ‘horror’ and ‘student’ in the headline the article sets the schema to the story. Within the first paragraph you are given a brief breakdown of the events that have occurred. It immediately leads you to a set ideology of the attack, one of ‘the innocent victim attacked by a monster’. This can also be related to Chibnall’s professional imperatives on several counts. Within the first three paragraphs the article gives you a run-down of the event (immediacy) a graphic recollection of what led to the event (dramatisation) and the fact that passengers were ‘just feet away’ while the student was victimised (titillation or the revealing of the forbidden).
The article then goes on to give a chronological account of how the victim happened to be on the train. This furthers the accuracy of Chibnall’s theory by incorporating the element of ‘Personalisation’ in to the text, making the victim real and reiterating the ‘virgin attacked by monster’ theory, as the victim was doing a routine task, not something that would ordinarily place anyone in danger.
The article then explains the procedures taken by the police in layman terms or in what Chibnall refers to as a simplified fashion and proceed with a statement by a ‘Primary Definer’ or what Chibnall calls ‘Structured Access’. The ‘Primary Definer’s’ statement: “It was a horrific occurrence, in my 18 years experience I have never before encountered such a crime” not only reiterates that the crime was committed, but reaffirms the violent nature of the crime. This type of statement could arguably be said to be a normal reaction to any violent occurrence, however, the article concludes with a description of the offender and a summary of similar crimes that have been committed in recent months.
The reporter refers to these instances as a ‘spate of assaults’. It is this type of terminology that Stanley Cohen refers to in ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’. The use of such characteristic distortion can lead people reading the article to believe that it is not safe to travel on the trains alone. A ‘moral panic’ surrounding the issue of rape and the circumstances to which rape occurs, in this instance travelling by train, could be created by the manipulation of the way the events have been narrated within the text.
The article ends in a similar fashion with an almost mock warning that the assailants have not been caught. It also gives a different location to the reported attack, which is also a type of distortion. The incident on the Virgin train may have been a one-off crime, however, the article concludes by stating that this type of crime happens on trains in other locations as well, inviting readers to believe that it is not an isolated incident.
The article is an example of crime reporting that is typical of what we have reviewed in our lectures. The location, text and contents of the article, however, do not all relate to one another. This makes it very difficult to analyse the meaning of the text. If you compare the location of the article to the content, you are faced with a distorted view of whether or not the Mirror considers rape to be a serious crime. The content gives you an account of a horrendous attack that could happen to anyone of us, as the offenders in both cases mentioned have not been caught. This concludes the ‘8 professional imperatives’ founded by Chibnall. ‘New Angle’ or ‘Speculation’ within the article leaves the case open to further features being covered by the reporter, similar to a cliff-hanger film, the reporter has left the reader waiting for the next instalment.
Bibliography
Clive Crickmer Train Rape Horror of Student, 18
The Mirror, February 25th 1999
David Kid-Hewitt
Richard Osborne Crime and the Media
Pluto Press, 1995
John Hartley Understanding News
Routledge, 1982
Stanley Cohen Folk Devils and Moral Panics
Granada Publishing, 1973
Crime and the Media, the post-modern spectacle, David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne, Pluto Press, 1995
By this I refer to sections of the newspaper that describe features and articles that are written. I would have assumed that this type of crime would be better suited to a section like news, or possibly the first three pages of the newspaper the crime is a current event. The position and surrounding text lead me to believe that the text was only commissioned by the editor due to a shortage of space, not something that they felt was important. This juxtaposing of crime with dissimilar articles is typical of popular press (Harley, 1982).
Crime and the Media, the post-modern spectacle, David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne, Pluto Press, 1995, Chapter 6, page 112.
Crime and the Media, the post-modern spectacle, David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne, Pluto Press, 1995, Chapter 6, page 112.
Crime and the Media, the post-modern spectacle, David Kidd-Hewitt and Richard Osborne, Pluto Press, 1995
Folk Devils and Moral Pancis, Stanley Cohen, Granada Publishing, 1973
