Comparing Tabloid and Broadsheet Coverage of an Event Free Essay Example

On Thursday 21st of September 2000, there were two big explosions in the MI6 building. I have chosen one tabloid ‘The Mirror’ and one broadsheet ‘The Independent’. The headline in the tabloid is big and bold, so it made me think that it was an interesting story because it caught my attention. The headline in the broadsheet goes across the whole page but it isn’t as big as the tabloid’s. The headline on the broadsheet is eye catching because it says ‘MI6 building rocked by explosions’.

The use of the word ‘rocked’ is very effective on readers because it makes the story sound interesting because it means that the explosion shook the building.

There are two sub-headings on each of the papers. The first sub-heading on the tabloid contains informal language such as ‘terrorist’. Whereas the broadsheet use formal language such as ‘dissident’ which makes me think that the person that caused the explosions done it for a reason and also makes that person sound posh.

The second sub-heading on the tabloid also contains informal language such as ‘explosion’, which puts little images in your mind of the building wrecked. In the broadsheet the second sub-heading contains technical language such as ‘device strikes’.

Which makes me think that what ever caused the explosions some sort of technology was used and not only that they use the word ‘strikes’ which makes you think that something was launched. The broadsheet contains two large coloured photos. One of the photos showed the building sealed off and the other one showed the damage caused from outside the building.

I really thought the photos were good because when the broadsheet say’s ‘rocked by explosions’ I wanted to know how much damage the explosion caused.

The tabloid has a little coloured picture of the building on the right hand side corner which just showed the building sealed off, which I didn’t really like because you can’t see what damage was caused. Both papers have facts and opinions. The tabloid also try to make sentences sound like facts for example, ‘ a foreign official said’ a foreign official sounds like a very formal person which tells me as a reader that the information the foreign official is saying must be true. Because a foreign official is a plays a very big role in this country.

There are allot of facts in the broadsheet but they make fact’s sound like opinions for example, ‘he added’ which is informal language, but they also called a person they interviewed ‘an expert on the MI6 building’ which tells me that this person knows what they are talking about. The tabloid contains quite short sentences and quite allot of informal language which makes me think that this paper is for people who aren’t that educated or it is for people who cannot read that well.

The Broadsheet contains quite long sentences which make me think that this paper is for educated people or for businessmen. The tabloid has got allot of eyewitnesses but what I didn’t like was that they had nearly half a page of eyewitnesses saying the same thing. So I found that a bit boring and it was also irritating. In the broadsheet they had eyewitnesses but they had three – four eyewitnesses so they weren’t repeating the same thing. Over all I preferred the broadsheet because it contained allot of information and it also contained allot of detail of the story.