An Analysis of the techniques of the techniques used by journalists to influence the readers' opinions and thoughts

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Media Coursework                               

        An Analysis of the techniques of the techniques used by journalists to influence the readers’ opinions and thoughts  

        Today news can be reported in a variety of different ways: television, websites, radio, but the main method for communicating the new is in newspapers.

        There are two main types of newspaper: tabloid and broadsheet. A tabloid newspaper reports a wide variety of subjects including gossip and entertaining news. Examples of tabloid newspapers are The Sun, The Daily Mail, and The Daily Star. Tabloids usually use bold lettering and photos to accompany their main articles. Another technique used by some tabloid newspapers is portraying evocative photographs of women on the front page in order to encourage men to buy their papers.

        Broadsheet papers were traditionally sold to businessmen, as they contain shares and stock values. There is more international news in the broadsheet and it is clearly organised in columns with smaller headlines and smaller text. They can contain political cartoons, and many use sophisticated, formal vocabulary. Examples of broadsheet papers are: The Guardian and The Telegraph.

        Each paper may have a political view for example; The Guardian has a left wing view and reflects the ideas of the Labour Party. The Times is Right Wing and expresses the ideas of the Conservative Party. The audience of newspapers depends on some of their political opinions, their age, sex, job, social class, religion and what they generally enjoy to read. For example, The Daily Mail caters for female readers; it has a ‘Femail’ section.

        I will be analysing articles from two of these different types of papers, The Telegraph and The Sun. The Sun is an example of a tabloid paper, and The Telegraph is an example of a broadsheet newspaper. Both articles are about the shooting of a policeman by a suspected drug merchant. The articles can be split into four main areas: headlines, layout, contents and language.

        The first article I shall be looking at is taken from The Sun. The headline dominates the page- as it is in a bold font. The headline can be split into two parts. The first part is at the very top and states- “Bike Bobby’s words to a pal before he was gunned down by a drug gang:” The second part of the headline says,  “What use is a stick against bullets?” This gives us a brief idea about what the article contains: two different matters: the killing of Pc Patrick Dunne and the question whether to arm the police force or not.

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        The expression “Bike Bobby” is used to describe the Pc. This term is reasonably colloquial. The ‘B’ sound is alliterated, and because ‘B’ is a soft sounding letter, it is used to try and evoke sympathy towards the victim, from the readers. The “Bike” suggests that Pc Dunne was unprotected and harmless.

        The phrase used in the headline to describe the shooting of the policeman is “gunned down by drug gang”. This is effective as the expression “gunned down” makes the murder appear more dramatic and horrific.

        

        

The sounds of “Gunned Down by a Drug Gang ...

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