All of these things are part of disillusioned ideas held by a small, racially intolerant minority of the British population concerning Germany. Papers such as ‘The Mirror’ may be partly responsible for encouraging such views and the almost fascist attitude towards Germany shown by some groups may be partly a result of this disproportionate patriotism.
The views held by “The Sun” are linked very closely to those of the English Conservative Party and again, the articles present quite a patriotic slant to the implications of the match’s outcome. “The Sun” also uses its name a lot in the articles, perhaps as an advertising device. For example, it does not go unmentioned that “Sven Goran ErikTheSun” led his team to victory with the supporters urging the players to “Come on my Sun”. Situated on the front page is a large photograph of Michael Owen celebrating in front of an advertising board clearly representing the logotype of ‘The Sun’. It is to be remembered that both ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ were sceptical of the abilities of a foreigner in the managerial position of the England football team, yet now, with hindsight, as it appears to have been beneficial to the team’s performance, ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ are full of nothing but support for the new coach. Both of these papers appear to be targeted at a predominantly male audience owing to their content and style. All headlines in these two newspapers utilise a sans-serif font and use bold, contrasting colour schemes, which have been proven to appeal to a male audience according to research conducted by graphic designers. In addition, there is more coverage in these two papers of the match in the main bodies of the papers and hard news is to be found more frequently than in ‘The Daily Telegraph’, which would suggest that a football fan is being targeted by the tabloids.
‘The Daily Telegraph’ is, by contrast to the Sun and Mirror, a broadsheet newspaper. It usually presents the news in a more politically neutral style and allows the readers to make judgements and draw conclusions from the news in a way that tabloids not often do. It can be said that ‘The Daily Telegraph’ appeals to a wider audience than either of the two tabloids, but it does tend to be noticeably sympathetic towards the middle-class portion of the population. Evidence to support this is found in an article written by a former labour M.P. published by ‘The Daily Telegraph’, who informs the reader that whilst watching the match, he was roasting foccacia, a foodstuff generally associated with middle-class citizens. He then goes on to explain how he wished he had been boiling tripe, a typically English food, thus displaying his lack of the extremist patriotism displayed by the tabloids. The Telegraph gives much less extensive coverage of the game than either of the two tabloids and the match does not make the main story of the front page, whereas ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ both have large photographs, bold headlines and exhaustive coverage of the match. However, a sports supplement is provided with the ‘Daily Telegraph’ for those who wish to learn more about a particular sporting event. It is interesting to note that this is done because it shows how the ‘Telegraph identifies its readers as not all being interested in the technicalities of the game and so it separates these articles from the main ‘bulk’ of the paper.
On the front page of ‘The Mirror’ is a somewhat disturbing picture of a pair of goalkeeper’s gloves, which serve as a metaphor for the decline in the success of the national German football team. In my opinion, this is excessive, especially when viewed with hindsight that it received more coverage than the terrorist attacks on America a few days later on September the eleventh.
I think that looking at editorials is the best way to gain an idea of how a paper collectively thinks as they present the news from the paper’s perspective and so the deviation of fact is likely to be greater in an editorial than in a non-editorial article. The editorials found in ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ are very clearly labelled as such, titled “The Sun says…” and “Voice of the Mirror” respectively. ‘The Daily Telegraph’ does not explicitly distinguish its editorials but they can be recognised from the way they are presented. For example, the editorials are usually headered by the title of the paper and its years of existence. The ‘Telegraph uses this device to underscore the traditional, conservative aspect of the paper, thus perhaps creating the impression of reliability, and that what it says can be trusted and accepted as truth.
The language found in ‘The Sun’ and ‘The Mirror’ is relatively simple and easy to understand compared with the polysyllabic words and complex sentence structures found in ‘The Daily Telegraph’. An example of this is where the newspapers explain the implications of the outcome of the match. ‘The Sun’ makes the point that
