Questions on The Sun and The Times

 Sources A and B cover the same news event but are from different genres of newspaper. How far has genre influenced the media language used in Sources A and B? In your answer you must:

•· outline genre conventions in British newspapers

•· analyse the contrasting use of media language in the sources

•· make judgements and reach conclusions about how far genre has influenced the media language used. [15]

Source A and B both cover the same story of David Cameron resigning but dude to their different genres they do so in different ways. Source A is a red top tabloid newspaper and so it focuses on being emotive and sensationalist. Source B on the other hand is a broadsheet newspaper and so it focuses on facts and information.

The first noticeable difference between the two sources is the use of headlines. The Sun uses: "Why should I do the hard ****?" whereas the times uses "Brexit Earthquake" The Suns' headline is more heavily focused on David Cameron himself. The headline portrays him as a lazy potty mouth through making the headline a quote from David Cameron himself. This headline has been on purposely chosen to portray Cameron in a bad light in order to create anger within the reader. Furthermore, The Times headline, "Brexit Earthquake" focuses more on Britain and the topic of Brexit as a whole rather than just David Cameron. Sensationalist language is used through the word "earthquake" to show the disastrous nature of the situation. It is unusual for a broadsheet newspaper to use sensationalist language but The Time uses it in this headline to show the seriousness of the situation of Brexit. So The Times rather than having a focus on people has more of a focus on the situation as a whole.

The two newspapers also use different images. The Sun shows a close-up of David Cameron looking quite worried and afraid whereas The Times shows an image of both David Cameron and a woman walking together down stairs with a worried expression on Cameron's face. This once again links to how the Sun is more focused on the failure of David Cameron alone and how The Times is more focused on the situation as a whole. This is because the Sun wants to create anger in its readers whereas The Times wants to inform them. The Image in the Sun is also much bigger than the one in the Times, this is because of the differences in genre as tabloids will use bigger pictures than broadsheets in order to show emotion and grab the attention of their readers.

The layout of the two newspapers also presents the stories differently. The Sun has a much more simplistic layout with one big picture that covers the entire front page along with not much writing to go with it. This contrasts with the Times' layout which image only takes up about half of the front page with lots of writing below it. The Sun also has ads on its front page where as the Times has introductions to other stories that are within the newspaper. As a tabloid the Sun is more simplistic in order to attract people who are less focused on information and instead just want to be entertained.  The Times has a more complex front page as it wants to attract people who are truly interested in the news and wants to inform them.

Finally, the use of language in the two newspapers also makes a clear contrast. Compared to the Times the Sun uses far more sensationalist language as it is a red top tabloid. Swearing is used and the fonts are big and bold to catch the readers attention. This contrasts with the Times which has much smaller less 'in your face' fonts and uses much more professional language. There is also a clear contrast in how much words there actually are between the two front pages. The Sun has a significant lack of the story itself on the front page, instead it just had the headline, whereas the Times has a detailed start to the story, factually explaining the situation at hand.