Media Coursework: A comparison of The Times and The Sun

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Media Coursework: A comparison of The Times and The Sun

By C.Keaveny

        I have taken The Sun and The Time from Monday 12th February 2001, and I am going to analyse and compare the two papers by looking at their respective front page in detail and briefly looking at how the two papers treat the same story differently. I will be looking at the way each paper is presented, what their aim is and how they try to achieve this, as well as what angle the papers chose to report from.

        Firstly, I am going to look at the front page of The Times. The Times is a “broadsheet” newspaper, which means that it will probably conform to certain criteria. These are the target audience, the way the paper is presented, what stories they cover and how they are covered and the language they use. The Times is aimed mainly at upper-middle/upper class readers and this is reflected in almost every aspect of the paper. The paper is usually sold folded in half due to its size, and therefore they usually include a large colour photograph in the top half, and use a coloured border to attract readers.

On this day there is a very large, and very bright red and orange photo of Ellen MacArthur, and a large blue and red block across the top. All of these stand out against the white background and therefore will help to attract readers. On the front page of The Times there is a story about the European currency, a story about MacArthur who sailed around the world single handed, a story about church school, another about the Human Genome and little stories about women in the army and Britain’s film studios. There is also an advert about a lottery type game they are promoting, a topical cartoon, an advert and a mini guide to what’s inside the paper.

Firstly I am going to look at the stories they are carrying and why they are printing these stories. It is a general stereotype that their target audience are interested in the currency and politics and this is why the story on the Chancellors views on the Euro is carried. These story is their main one and is quite important and for many will be interesting and appeal to them. The article is covered in good depth on the front page alone and is continued further on the second page with 2 further individual journalists commentators views and Irelands view as well. The language used to describe the story is “high brow”, that is higher than the standard of English you get in The Sun. The language is also more useful in describing the story in the way the Times want to do it. The Times uses complex words and phrases and includes more complex area’s of the economy and much of the text on the front page would never be seen on the front page of The Sun. The story about Ellen MacArthur is more of a human interest story, which is not the type of story The Times would usually carry, but this is quite and important and interesting one. I am going to use this story later, to see the difference between the way The Sun report this, compared to The Times.

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The other two stories are about education and scientific research, and are more what you would expect from The Times. They are areas, which often interest intellectuals and are concerned with politics, another area The Times deals with.

The Times also shows a reasonably large advert for an expensive pearl shop, this is what you would expect from The Times, a high quality paper advertising a high quality from a high quality shop.

The Sun contains very little text and information, in comparison to The Times, who have included a lot of text and several stories in the space ...

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