Exercise: Positive and negative spin
Look at some different newspapers and note how racial issues are covered in the modern
press. Don’t just look at stories that specifically involve race – look, too, at stories where one
or more of the people involved just happens to be black (or Asian, member of a traveller
community, etc.). Concentrate particularly on the photographic imagery used to accompany
the stories. Is there a difference between the ‘quality’ broadsheet press (e.g. The Guardian)
and the tabloid press (e.g. The Sun)? Make some notes in your learning log or blog.
Next, compare an image from a broadsheet newspaper with a tabloid image. If possible,
choose two images portraying the same (or similar) person or event. The story you choose
could involve race, but it doesn’t have to. The idea of this exercise is to show you how public
perception of a person or event can be influenced by the photographic imagery used.
Read the commentary and the headlines to see how the person or event is being portrayed
in words, then study the images carefully. For example, look to see whether the images have
been cropped differently.
• Where different images have been used for the same story by different papers, what do
you think is the editorial basis for each choice?
• Is each story positive or negative, sympathetic or sensational?
• If a reader was just given the headline and the image for each story, what different
conclusions might they draw? Or is there no difference?
• How has the imagery been used to influence/manipulate the reader?
Place the images and your analysis in your learning log or blog.