We also saw that bias can be shown when a ‘good’ photograph of the person they are supportive of is in the article and when they are not in favour of someone, the newspaper publishes an unflattering photograph. An example of this was in an article about a man who sexually harassed his secretary. The person they are opposed to is shown in a photograph, which is a small close up of his angry looking face, but the victim of this harassment was shown in a picture that took up nearly half of the page and she is smiling and is looking very confident, so it is obvious that they are taking her side.
The size of a photograph can also show us how important the newspaper must think it is for us to see it. If the photograph is relatively big, the newspaper must think that it is important for us to see this before we evaluate the story, as the pictures that they print are also prejudiced towards the side of the story they have taken. We saw this in a story about a young offender who won the lottery. The picture was over two pages, so you saw it straight away, and it showed the boy drinking from a champagne bottle with his electronic tag on his ankle, so this immediately made us think that he was undeserving of the money, as the electronic tag shows us that he is a criminal.
Bias can also be shown in many other ways. The space taken up by the article is another point that shows bias in a newspaper. When a newspaper takes up a lot of space for an article, they think that it is an important issue and that their readers should read it so that they can take the same side as the newspaper. When an article only takes up a small column in the side of a page it is obvious that the newspaper doesn’t think it is of much importance. The position of the article in a newspaper can also show you how important the newspaper thinks that an article is. Tabloid newspapers tend to have more gossip about people nearer the front of them, but broadsheet papers put more important issues like politics and world issues closer to the beginning of the newspaper.
Headlines can also show bias, and these are usually what attract us to the article. We saw this when we compared the same articles in two different newspapers, and found that both of the tabloid papers took the same side in most articles straight away, just by looking at the headline. We saw this in an article about a boy winning the lottery. In one newspaper the headline was ‘ The Millionaire Young Offender’ and in the other it was ‘Tagged Thug wins 9.7million.’ Therefore, both of the newspapers want you to be against him winning because he is a criminal.
I think that in most cases it is good that newspapers show bias, as it would be very boring to read the articles if the newspaper showed a neutral account of the stories because it would just be a page full of facts about each side. When bias is shown in an article there are usually comments from the people involved and these help you to make up your mind about the article. Bias in a newspaper is not something that I think is wrong, because you don’t have to take a certain side just because the newspaper does. The only time that I think newspapers shouldn’t be biased is when the article is about a court case that hasn’t taken place, and the newspaper takes sides before anything has been proven. Then when the wrong side has been taken someone will end up getting a reputation for something that they are not guilty of.
Written by Laura, Greenock
