Exercise : Positive and Negative Spin

Look at some different newspapers and note how racial issues are covered in the modern press..

Here I chose to look at 'The Times' and compare todays edition with 'The Sun' on the same day. The story today was a very moving and world changing image of a three year old boy drowning in the sea trying to escape to Europe.  His Mother and brother died too. It was a very sad day, truly awful.

The Sun paper always looks cheap, regardless of the story, even here its page is cluttered.  It urges the Prime minister to deal with the crisis, the biggest since world war two..

The images are matching the headline, It's Life and Death, the page is split between the two images.  On the left is Life .. the picture shows a baby born that day in a Hungarian station, wrapped in foil blankets to aid its survival, the picture isn't clear or particularly nice to look at.  The baby called Hope - Hope for its future - but not the gooey baby pictures we are used to with our babies laden with luxuries and wrapped in soft warm blankets.

The second image is of the three year old boy who has drowned, I feel the way these two pictures are placed together doesn't give him the respect he deserves.   However it does tell the whole story - from birth to death, you can feel the mess these people are in, as both of these situations are wrong.

The Times by contrast has the same picture but is just the dead boy on his own being carried from the water.  Your attention is solely on this situation, you think of nothing else accept the dead boy.  It is a haunting image and is sharp and uncomplicated, tells the whole story.
Much more sophisticated than the Sun.

The headline is .. Europe divided .. I think everyone is divided.  We all would do the same for our families, but also know our own countries are full of their own problems already.

Although the Sun and the Times are telling the same story, the Sun has chosen a contrast, the two extremes of an awful time.  The times for me is a more powerful image and story as it focuses just on the tragedy which I think its too awful to make it part of another story.

This story is something horrific which we do not see thankfully all the time and both papers are making the same point.

The headlines :
Times - Europe divided
The Sun - Its Life and Death

I think these headlines are appropriate for the pictures but seen alone could mean anything, when seen with the images, they make more sense.

These images have influenced and manipulated the viewer - very much so - sadly these pictures changed the whole world.  Lets hope for the better.