Media Course work: The Times and The Daily Star’s Coverage of the Ian Huntley Conviction

For my Media coursework I have chosen to study and compare The Times and The Daily Star. I purchased these papers on Thursday December 18th 2003. The story is covered on both front pages and then continues into the inside. It is about Ian Huntley being found guilty of murdering Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells. Both newspapers have articles on how the parents felt, what happened in the trial and how the people of Soham feel. The Times is a broadsheet newspaper and is aimed at social groups A, B and C1. These social groups include Lawyers, doctors, accountants, teachers, nurses, police officers, clerical workers and people in other skilled jobs. The Times has a more extensive coverage and longer articles than the Daily Star. The Daily Star aims at social groups C2, D and E. these are plumbers, mechanics, lorry drivers, postal workers, the unemployed and casual workers. It has a bolder layout and the articles are shorter than the Times. In the Daily Star it calls Ian Huntley † Evil child sex fiend†, â€Å"sex beast† and â€Å"killer is caged at last†. This shows open disgust about Ian Huntley and they are comparing his actions to that of a monster. The Daily Star reports on gossip, sex and what the celebrities are up to. The paper does not have a fixed political view and this comes across in the paper. The Times on the other hand is centrist and tries to be neutral and does not have a political side. It calls Ian Huntley â€Å"Huntley† instead of using vocabulary such as monster. On the front cover of the Daily Star it has a photograph of Maxine Carr kissing a seventeen-year-old boy the same night the girls were murdered. This is a human-interest story and is vaguely linked to the trial that found Ian Huntley guilty. The picture takes up nearly the whole of the first page and aims at grabbing the readers' attention, as it is shocking to cheat on your partner in public. The idea behind this it that 100% of readers read the headline and see the photograph so if the paper can hold the readers' attention then the paper might be purchased. In contrast The Times although it has a large colour photograph on the front there is still quite a bit of text surrounding it. The photograph is a picture of Ian Huntley that has been enlarged greatly to allow you to look into his eyes. The Times aims to make the front page instantly recognizable as that particular newspaper. The Times' headline â€Å"No Mercy, No Regret† is taken from a speech made by the judge to summarise the trial. It is a restrained headline and is more serious than the Daily Star's that is â€Å"Kiss Of Death†. The editor uses the headline â€Å"Kiss of death† as it is far more dramatic and has a more ‘down market' approach to the main story that happened that day. † Kiss of Death† is more dramatic and provokes shock and disgust among the readership. The Times' headline is using someone else's opinion on Ian Huntley and is not as emotive as the Daily Star's headline. The Times uses only four photographs on the story where as the Daily Star uses nineteen photographs. This is because broadsheet newspapers like The Times are more serious, plainer and have a more restrained layout than tabloid newspapers like the Daily Star, which try to have a bolder layout. By having more photographs the Daily Star can capture the readers attention and make it visually exciting. The Times has additional coverage of the story so photographs are not so vital as it is all explained in the text. The Daily Star has pictures of the evidence and of Huntley's bedroom. This shows the reader how Ian Huntley tried to hide the evidence and what he was doing in police custody. The Times has pictures of floral tributes and just a few of Ian Huntley, Maxine Carr and the family. The Times has a menu on the first page this is called a â€Å"puff† or â€Å"blurb†. It advertises the content in the paper that might interest the reader. The Daily Star has a small puff but unlike the Times it does not summarise the content of the articles. The Daily Star uses quotations, for example; â€Å"Jess's Dad: I want Huntley in coffin†. This is dramatic and would appeal to the readers of the Daily Star who are after human feeling and not the facts of the trial. The Times has article involving â€Å"New money-laundering regulations† and â€Å"More awards for The Times†. So the articles inside are about political and financial matters. The Daily Star uses a fair amount of bold type for example on page two under the heading of â€Å"Huntley killed girls in frustrated frenzy† that whole article is in bold type. In the article it uses language that will turn the reader into hating Ian Huntley. Here are some examples of this in the same article, † they rejected his twisted advances† and â€Å"Ian Huntley murdered Holly and Jessica out of sexual frustration†. The Times describes Ian Huntley as † a violent sexual predator†. The Times only uses bold type on headlines, sub-heads and for the journalist's names. Both papers use Journalese register. In The Times it uses words like â€Å"blunders† and â€Å"booming voice of justice†. The Daily Star use it more frequently like â€Å"fiend† â€Å"cops† and â€Å"frenzy† The Daily Star uses â€Å"blunders† just like The Times. These examples help the audience to understand the article more easily, because it is familiar language. The Times uses Journalese register that has a stronger degree of formality but it still uses words like â€Å"blunder† to exaggerate the story. The Daily Star uses repetition and alliteration quite often. For example â€Å"Frustrated Frenzy† and it has a rectangle with â€Å"justice† written in it along with a photograph of the two girls the day they went missing. The Times uses only a bit of repetition and that is in the main headline â€Å"No Mercy, No Regret†. This is probably because the editor of The Times does not feel that the readership of it's paper needs to be told something twice as they have had a better education than the readers of The Daily Star. The Times demands a reading age six years older than the Daily Star. The Times uses a more sophisticated range of vocabulary for example â€Å"persistent cruelty†, â€Å"undisguised loathing†, â€Å"demonstrate some slither of humanity† and â€Å"allegations†. This offers more description to the reader and makes the article more intriguing. The Daily Star uses vocabulary like â€Å"groped†, â€Å"ruled out† and â€Å"Monsters Lair† this makes a powerful impression on the reader and facts are often exaggerated from the truth to sell papers. The Daily Star uses lots more quotations that involve peoples opinions for example † Our girls were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't think there is anymore to be said about him† this is an extract from what the parents of the girls said to the press. The Times uses Experts views on the trial and that is mainly the judge. For example â€Å"it was not just for those two families you have sought to destroy, your crimes are those for which the community suffer†. The Times gives an unbiased view but cleverly uses quotations that show what the paper thinks on the matter it is addressing. The Daily Star has a paragraph devoted to what the paper itself thinks on the verdict. The Times ends the article about the parents of the murdered school girls, Holly and Jessica, by using a final quotation, † Mr. Wells said that his family would now be going on holiday. † We are going to take a short holiday break and gather our thoughts and focus on our son.† Using this quotation here concludes the report by looking to the future and helps link the reader more closely to the story. The Daily Star uses single-sentenced paragraphs, which are highly characteristic for tabloid papers, simplify the argument and allow the reader to follow it with ease. For example â€Å"He used to live with a girl of 15- and fathered her child†. The Times on the other hand uses complex sentences in comparison. For example, â€Å"But in searching the Police National Computer, Cambridgeshire police looked only for information about an Ian Nixon. Cambridgeshire also made inquiries with their counterparts in Humberside, but admit that they â€Å"probably† asked only two names.† The Times puts probably in inverted commas to show that this is somebody else's term, and the journalist does not necessarily approve. Both newspapers convey as much information as they possibly can in the first paragraph. This is because it is estimated that around 70% of readers may read until the end of the first paragraph. Here is an example from the front page of The Times, â€Å"Ian Huntley is today revealed as a violent sexual predator who should never have been given the job that brought him into contact with Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.† This first paragraph tells the reader who is involved and what happened. In the Daily Star ‘And' is a sentence conjunction and it is frequently used as paragraph connectives. Here is an example, † And as he was led t o the cells the full horror of his perverted life was revealed for the first time.† I conclude that although there are many differences between The Times and The daily Star, The Times are moving towards including some of the tabloid papers features as it has more human-interest stories in it than ever before. The Times still has a plainer and more restrained layout than the Daily Star that uses colour and photographs to make it visually exciting and hold the readers attention. The editors of both papers try to cram as much information into the first paragraph and headline and few readers carry on reading until the end of the article. The Daily Star uses shorter paragraphs and lengths of articles to hold onto the reader's attention and to make it simple enough for the reader to understand. The Times gives a neutral approach to what is an emotive story that most people have very strong feeling about.