Comparison of News Reports
On Thursday 22nd April 2004, Ron Atkinson, manager and footballing
legend, was overheard making a racist remark concerning player Marcel
Desailly- the black Chelsea defender during the Chelsea-Monaco
Champion’s League semi-final.
The story received colossal press coverage from all of the newspapers,
mainly because Atkinson is famous for coaching so many black players.
I have studies two newspapers’ accounts of the same story. One paper
is a tabloid (The Sun) and the other is a broadsheet (The Daily
Telegraph). The reason why I have chosen to examine a tabloid report
and also a broadsheet is to discover the similarities between them and
also the contrasts in the reporting style, biases and also the way Ron
Atkinson is presented throughout.
The main headline of The Sun is ‘If Big Ron’s racist, I’m a white
man’. This headline uses slang and personalisation as it refers to
Atkinson as ‘Big Ron’. Another similiar headline is ‘Black soccer aces
back ex-boss in race slur row’. These headlines have more of an impact
because they actually use the words ‘racist’ and ‘race’. These words
are politically incorrect and to use them when you’re such a high
profile personality is seen to be a controversial scandal. There is
one main photo of Atkinson; it is a casual picture, I know this
because he is wearing sunglasses and casual clothes. It is an extreme
close up picture and he actually looks quite threatening. A photograph
of him with the Coca-Cola Cup and various photos of famous footballers
who support Atkinson make him look more respected and important. This
article is split into three columns and has more pictu...
... middle of paper ...
... similar as racist language is considered
politically incorrect by most political members. However, the headline
in The Sun seems to attempt to persuade the reader that Ron Atkinson
is not generally racist and this is a one-off incident that will not
be repeated by Atkinson who is considered to not be racist. The Sun
uses a more sensational style of reporting to appeal to its generally
lower-class readership, whereas The Daily Telegraph is generally more
serious in tone and uses more polysyllabic words to suit its more
middle-class readership.
To emphasise the point further The Daily Telegraph uses much more
sophisticated language to appeal to its higher class readers whereas
The Sun’s lower-class readers would not appreciate this type of
language and therefore prefer the less-sophisticated vocabulary.