Essay on Media Analysis

Submitted By EzzieB
Words: 1210
Pages: 5

Newspaper articles are written to inform the public of current issues within the local and global society, but just how much truth is actually in them? For a newspaper to sell, the articles within have to be interesting enough to attract the reader’s attention. Newspapers are meant to report facts but the plain truth often won’t be exciting or entertaining enough to grab a reader’s attention. A common way to resolve this problem is to exaggerate facts or add things in that aren’t all that true. These exaggerations and alterations of the truth trigger emotional reactions in the reader and become what is known as media sensationalism. By comparing the two articles presented we can see how sensationalism can alter a story through the use of a range of techniques.
The very first technique a reader will come across when reading these two articles is the difference in the headlines. The headline for the first article is ‘Party girl killed in mystery shotgun blasts’. The title of this article portrays a crime that is both violent and cloaked in uncertainty. The headline for the second article is ‘Young woman killed in shotgun attack’. This title creates a sense that the crime was both intentional but it is also straight to the point. Both of these titles give the reader different impressions about the crime that has taken place. The journalists have made the choice to use these titles to grab people’s attention so that they will read the articles.
The information that an article chooses to use along with the amount of information that the article decides to present can affect the way a reader views the issue. The first article ‘Party girl killed in mystery shotgun blasts’ mentions the fact that the victim has parents and several siblings. This may perhaps be used to provoke the reader into feeling sympathy for the woman’s family. The second article ‘Young woman killed in shotgun attack’ chooses to use less personal details about the victim, instead presenting the reader with more facts about the crime. This allows for the reader to gain more knowledge about the event that has taken place without involving them in the victim’s personal life.
The choice of language is a very important element when writing an article. Perhaps some of the first examples of language choice within the articles are seen in the titles. The use of the word ‘girl’ in the title of the first article gives the reader an impression that the victim is a vulnerable, young innocent. By saying that the victim was an innocent young girl as opposed to a young woman the journalist is able to create more of an impact on readers as a result of readers usual responses to crimes against children. The word ‘mystery’, also in the title of the first article, conveys the idea that there is uncertainty in the air around an unsolved crime. The second article uses the word ‘attack’ in its title making the reader feel like the victim was shot deliberately. The first article uses the word ‘murder’ all the way through it. This creates a feeling that the death of the victim was violent and bloody, bringing emotions of anger and sympathy to the reader. In comparison, the second article uses the word ‘killed’, which gives a less harsh impression of the victim’s death. All of these examples help to create the tone of each article.
The first article ‘Party girl killed in mystery shotgun blasts’ adopts a sad, depressive tone. The writer seems to speak with a feeling that the death of the victim was a very regrettable thing to have happened. This tone of voice makes the reader feel depressed and upset about the incident. The second article, ‘Young woman killed in shotgun attack’, has more of a neutral tone than that of the first article. In this way readers are not made to feel one way or another about the incident and are free to decide how they feel about it. The tone of an article can be a very important technique for journalists to incorporate into their writing as it can arouse