How does it Mirror The Sun?
The Mirror conforms to the staple requirements of a tabloid newspaper by making sure it contains a large showbiz section that focuses on celebrity gossip. As well as this it also has a large section on television and its programmes, most notably at the moment, The X Factor. The Mirror is aware that a large majority of its key demographic are the C12DE’s whom this kind of information is more likely to appeal to. The main age of the stereotypical ‘Mirror reader’ is believed to be between the ages of 25-34 and if personified offers a love interest to The Sun’s ‘White Van Man’ character.
The Mirror’s main tabloid rival is The Sun, both undoubtedly hold an elite position as Britains most popular tabloids and despite their differing political allegiances they are relatively similar in both content and layout.Where the papers tend to differ is through gender, The Sun is typically aimed at males with the prime example being the topless page three girl who is used to adorn the male readers. The Mirror however attracts a large female readership and therefore aims a lot of the advertisements at its female dominated audience. The founder of The Mirror Lord Northcliffe launched the paper as a ‘Paper for women, run by women’ despite this early claim, the paper has only had one female editor, Mary Howarth, who was also the first editor but only lasted a year in her position.
Nonetheless the differences are subtle as are their political views, despite them being at different ends of the spectrum; The sun is renowned for having a right wing viewpoint whereas the mirror often leans towards the left. Both papers published articles regarding the comments of Fifa President Sepp Blatter who controversially said that racism in football should be resolved with a handshake. The Sun attacked Sepp Blatter saying that his apology was ‘half-hearted’ whereas The Mirror took a more conservative neutral approach to the story. One would assume that the reason The Sun attacked Blatter is because of the ongoing dispute between The F.A and Fifa. The Sun likes to provoke a strong sense of national pride and therefore would get behind the countries governing body of football, whereas The Mirror adopts a laissez-faire approach as it is not as keen to impose overpowering beliefs in its articles. An alternative opinion to that is that in fact The Mirror prefers to keep stories on Sport as brief as possible as the paper is of course for women, who might not want to read detailed stories on sporting events.
As the Mirror is a paper for women, it could be argued that it also has underlying elements of feminism to it. It seems to be that the unwritten rule of tabloid newspapers is that they all have an attractive bare-chested female on page 3. The Mirror is the only exception to this; The Sun, The Daily Star and the The Daily Sport all follow this ‘law’. Understandably The Mirror’s readership may find this demeaning as the women’s sole purpose is to be visually pleasing to the male reader. On closer inspection of the newspaper i also noticed how in particular the problem page articles will be alot more appealing to females as the majority were advice for women in unfortunate relationships.
The Mirror’s main tabloid rival is The Sun, both undoubtedly hold an elite position as Britains most popular tabloids and despite their differing political allegiances they are relatively similar in both content and layout.Where the papers tend to differ is through gender, The Sun is typically aimed at males with the prime example being the topless page three girl who is used to adorn the male readers. The Mirror however attracts a large female readership and therefore aims a lot of the advertisements at its female dominated audience. The founder of The Mirror Lord Northcliffe launched the paper as a ‘Paper for women, run by women’ despite this early claim, the paper has only had one female editor, Mary Howarth, who was also the first editor but only lasted a year in her position.
Nonetheless the differences are subtle as are their political views, despite them being at different ends of the spectrum; The sun is renowned for having a right wing viewpoint whereas the mirror often leans towards the left. Both papers published articles regarding the comments of Fifa President Sepp Blatter who controversially said that racism in football should be resolved with a handshake. The Sun attacked Sepp Blatter saying that his apology was ‘half-hearted’ whereas The Mirror took a more conservative neutral approach to the story. One would assume that the reason The Sun attacked Blatter is because of the ongoing dispute between The F.A and Fifa. The Sun likes to provoke a strong sense of national pride and therefore would get behind the countries governing body of football, whereas The Mirror adopts a laissez-faire approach as it is not as keen to impose overpowering beliefs in its articles. An alternative opinion to that is that in fact The Mirror prefers to keep stories on Sport as brief as possible as the paper is of course for women, who might not want to read detailed stories on sporting events.
As the Mirror is a paper for women, it could be argued that it also has underlying elements of feminism to it. It seems to be that the unwritten rule of tabloid newspapers is that they all have an attractive bare-chested female on page 3. The Mirror is the only exception to this; The Sun, The Daily Star and the The Daily Sport all follow this ‘law’. Understandably The Mirror’s readership may find this demeaning as the women’s sole purpose is to be visually pleasing to the male reader. On closer inspection of the newspaper i also noticed how in particular the problem page articles will be alot more appealing to females as the majority were advice for women in unfortunate relationships.
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