news article and front cover

ESSAY: SHANNON AND MADELIENE 

Both articles were written by the same newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, However they were both portrayed completely differently. The McCann’s were portrayed as a loving caring, more ideal family then the Matthews. They emphasised on the fact that the McCann’s were an upper class family with well paid jobs. Whereas for the Matthews case, they highlighted the fact that the mother had 7 children from 5 different fathers, and they were from a working class background which painted the picture that they were less, important. 

For the McCann’s, they make the mother sound so devastated and truly traumatised by the event, they didn’t acknowledge the fact that the children were left by themselves. Whereas the paper for the Matthews talks right away about how the mother must be involved somehow and is being questioned, rightly so. 

The article for The Mcann’s was written overall, more positively. For example they say “The McCann’s described how they plan to use some of the £300,000 already raised by a special Madeleine fund to pay for trips to a series of European countries, including Spain and Germany. The visits are intended to keep up the high-profile of their daughter in the media.” This makes them seem like ‘good parents’ and like they are using their money for the good of the case whereas in the Shannon Mathews case they make her seem like they’re just in it for the money to spend on their own personal use. She is portrayed as a typical working class chav which puts a biased image of her, they do this by talking about her being a mother of 7 by 5 different fathers.

For the article with the picture of madeleine and her mum, they put a very family friendly image which connotates that she would never do anything bad to her child and there is a lot of love .  The mother and her daughter are in a picture and the mother looks concerned for her daughter’s safety on the slide and her daughter looks like she’s having a lot of fun. 

The picture used for the Shannon Matthews case is very different because the picture is of them separate. They are not seen together having fun, the picture of the mother is a ‘mugshot’ type of picture and she’s looking down avoiding the camera which connotes her being guilty.  The picture of Shannon is very innocent and cheeky, she looks quite vulnerable. 

The way social class is presented in the newspapers is very significant. The  one of Shannon is more lower class because the mum is messy looking and the one of  mcanns mum is more higher class.

I think that news coverage can definitely be hierarchical in 2 ways. One way is in the sense of how much they get portrayed and classes, ethnicity etc. So madeleines story was covered more then Shannon’s because Shannon was from a working class background and they are often left behind or rejected by the press and the rest of society, but Madeleine was from a higher class and they are seen as more newsworthy. 

Another way is  how they get portrayed, shannons family being working class, were portrayed as guilty, criminal, poor chavs whereas madeleines family being upper class were represented as smart, innocent, loving people who play a positive role in contributing to society. 

There is definalty a biased side to each paper, they wrote it so that people would side with the mcanns and would think well of them but also have a lot of sympathy for them which raised more money by making them seem like genuine people by discussing their jobs but for shannons family, we take a negotiated reading because they’re portrayed as chavy and scummy by the paper mentioning her 5 baby fathers and 7 children. This makes us feel less sympathy and raises more suspition.