Princess Diana

According to the Macintosh dictionary application, News is newly received or noteworthy information. News keeps the society well informed. There are many ways to get news, by television, radio, internet , newspaper, and so on.

This essay will focus on the differences and similarities of two types of newspapers. There are two types of newspapers, broadsheet and tabloid. Broadsheet's target market is the more educated people with more interests in business, economical growth or what happens around the world, whereas tabloid's target market is the less educated people, and the size of tabloid is much smaller than broadsheet because the people who read tabloid usually read it on-the-go. News values determine what kinds of events are reported as news, and where these events are placed in a sequence of news (Turner, Lecture#2,p. 4). The contents in tabloids are mostly soft news rather than hard news, soft news is more entertaining news, but hard news contains more important news and has large number of facts.

On 17th of October 2007, new evidence of Princess Diana's death occurred on both Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph. New evidence of her death has been found and it caused a stir around the media and in the public's eyes. A witness from France had come forward about what he saw on the night of her death. He claimed that he saw a very bright light coming from a motorcycle toward the car that Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed were in. When the driver of their car lost control and slammed into the pole inside the tunnel, one of the passenger of the motorcycle came to their car, gave the other man a hand signal then drove away. His story made the public thinks that this was an inside job to actually kill the Princess and her man.

The similarities of Sydney Morning Herald and the Daily Telegraph are both newspapers used pictures, even though they did not use the same ones but they tried to bring back the readers memories of her death. They put quotes from the French witness, also other witnesses that saw what happened ten years ago.

The Sydney Morning Herald approached the readers by dramatically putting pictures of Prince William and Prince Harry on her memorial day to create a sense of grief all over again. The Sydney Morning Herald captured both of her sons at a very weak moment, that way the readers may personalize or relate their own experience. Sydney Morning Herald focused on giving all the facts about Mr. Levistre (the French witness). This news was not located on the front page, instead it was located on the back page, this is probably because there was no conformation about the certainty of his story. There are still doubts of what he had witnessed.

The Daily Telegraph used pictures that were taken minutes before the deadly crash happened, this way, the readers can put themselves in her shoes, they can imagine what it feels like not knowing their future. They included comments from the authorities about this new witness.

The headline in The sydney Morning Herald was "Diana jury told of a white flash, like radar", the headline used on the broadsheet is more sophisticated rather than The Daily Telegraph's headline which was "Blinding light flashed at Diana's car in tunnel", it is dramatic and obvious, The Daily Telegraph attracts the reader by having a straight-forward line.

This story made the news because Princess Diana is one of the most influential person in the world, her life had become a broken fairy tale when she divorced her then husband Prince Charles. She had become a royal celebrity, after all her death was caused by the paparazzis who were chasing her for pictures with Dodi Al-Fayed. Her alleged affair with him made the news, it was scandalous because she was a princess, living in a castle, having what she wants easily, her life is very interesting to the public. The media operate as a framing device, focusing attention on an individual or an alleged activity and refusing to let go (Thompson, 1997, p. 53). Until now, her story is still worth to read, the public is still interested of what happened to her.

The media have reacted to the death of Diana with such grief and sadness since they have lost the best selling commodity they ever had (Kirby, Death of a Princess). Princess Diana influenced lot of life around the world that everything she did became the center of attention, her clothes, jewelries, bags, etc. She gave a free publicity for the products that she used. The more she emerged on the outside world the more