I found "Head-stamp thug guilty of murder" in March 16 issue of The Irish Sun to be a textbook example of typical tabloid journalism.
The headline is written in large capital letters and in a colloquial tone with an emphasis on creating impact and a sense of urgency. The inclusion of the words 'head-stamp' conjure up a very violent image in the reader's mind, shocking them into reading the article. Tabloids make a lot of their money off of people's emotions — whether it be shock, outrage or anger.
Sometimes in broadsheets, court reportage can come across as dry, boring or confusing because of the way in which they strive to maintain an objective, balanced and formal approach to any given trial.
In complete contrast to that, the journalist here wrote the article in a fairly emotive way, with the construction of a 'bad' guy and a 'good' guy in order to tug at the reader's heartstrings. The bad guy is demonised in the article as being a 'thug', 'vile' and 'evil' whereas the good guy is described as being 'completely innocent'.
This definitely would not have been done in a broadsheet newspaper. In a broadsheet newspaper, the article would have been framed differently altogether. It would be void of all emotion altogether in an effort to be objective and unbias. However, in this case, The Sun presented the story in a extremely human way with almost subliminal commentary.
A picture of the murderer outside of court, pouting, is included next to a picture of the victim smiling almost angelically in order to further insinuate that sense of good vs evil. Putting a face to the victim's name always helps people in visualizing and empathizing with them.
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