Crime News Analysis

Introduction

In this crime news analysis I will be focusing on the right wing tabloid newspaper ‘The Sun’ and the left wing broadsheet ‘The Guardian.’ I will be analysing the article of the student riots in both newspapers, and seeing whether there are similarities or differences in the way in which the event is presented. The incident occurred when a demonstration against higher tuitions fees got out of hand whereby some protesters used violent tactics to voice their opinions.

Quantitative and Qualitative

Within a news article, the qualitative aspect is usually the images and the quantitative is the amount of text used. Quantitative data is usually seen as more favourable and it is common within broadsheets like ‘The Guardian,’ whereas tabloids such as ‘The Sun’ tend to use more qualitative data (Ericson et al, 1991). Tabloids usually target the working class who are stereotypically deemed to be less educated, therefore using numerous pictures almost makes it equivalent to a child’s story book, whereas ‘The Guardian’ is richer in text and aimed at the middle class thus has more of a debate (Schlesinger et all, 1991) . ‘The Sun’ uses 3 pages, has 8 images and uses about 20% of text. Whereas, ‘The Guardian’ uses 5 pages, 3 images and has about 65% as text. The journalist tend to be specific on what they believe make an article appealed to their readers.

News value

There are many criminal events that occur every day, however only a few are selected as they are deemed to be newsworthy. Chibnall (1977) claimed that a story is classed as newsworthy if it is dramatized, immediate and involves structured access. ‘The Sun’ could be seen to use all these elements, for example they over emphasize on the violence that occurred and ...

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...labelled them as such (Hayward, 2006). In this case, if the label is accepted there could be more protests and riots because the individuals may believe that this is the quickest way to get the message across, UKUncuts activist also claimed within ‘The Guardian’ that ‘more high profiled campaigns could be expected’.

Conclusion

Overall, it is clear that there is a contrast between both of the newspapers. It could be argued that the production of newspapers is mainly to fulfil the readers expectations, for example, the readers of ‘The Sun’ expect to read a dramatic story which is why the editors select specific words and images, whereas the ‘The Guardian’ readers may prefer more of an intellectual debate (Schlesinger et all, 2010). They both tell the same story but in different ways, consequently it is up to the reader to decide which they believe or prefer.