Abstract
Theories of News Values (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Harcup and O’Neill, J Stud 18(12):1470–1488, 2017) identify criteria by which news stories are selected and prioritised according to newsworthiness. Among these criteria is the concept of agenda, suggesting that stories may be selected or de-selected by certain publications on the basis of whether they fit the political agenda of the publication. However, when other news values come into play, tensions may arise as high-profile stories that centre on figures whose histories and political identities conflict with those of the publication are pushed into the public sphere. This chapter looks at two such incidences, the killings of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016 and Conservative MP David Amess in 2021, in an attempt to identify how journalists frame and negotiate aspects of these figures whose views and careers present either alignment with or a departure from the bipartisan politics of the case study publications, the Daily Mail and The Guardian. A number of negotiation techniques are observed, including minimisation and assimilation.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Andrews, Luke. 2020. Father of Three-Year-Old Syrian Boy Alan Kurdi Who Washed Up Dead on a Greek Beach During the Migrant Crisis Names Newborn Son After Child He Lost. Mail Online. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8211713/Father-three-year-old-Syrian-boy-Alan-Kurdi-names-newborn-son-child-lost.html. Accessed August 2022. April 12.
Atkin, Charles, Judee Burgoon, and Michael Burgoon. 1983. How Journalists Perceive the Reading Audience. Newspaper Research Journal, January 1.
Badshah, Nadeem, and Clinton, Jane. 2021, October 16. David Amess Latest: Suspect Named as Ali Harbi Ali. The Guardian. Retrieved from LexisNexis December 2021.
Baker, P., C. Gabrielatos, and T. McEnery. 2013. Discourse Analysis and Media Attitudes, the Representation of Islam in the British Press. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Barker, Alex. 2021. Spin off MailOnline to Liberate the Daily Mail. Financial Times, July 1.
Bates, Stephen. 2021. Sir David Amess Obituary. The Guardian. October 17.
Bland, Archie. 2016. How Did the Language of Politics Get So Toxic?; Six Weeks After the Death of MP Jo Cox, Charged Talk of ‘Traitors’, ‘Vermin’ and ‘Back-Stabbing’ Has Not Gone Away. For Donald Trump, Such Confrontational Rhetoric Is Second Nature. And Worryingly, the Link Between Violent Words and Actions May Be Closer Than You Think. The Guardian, July 31.
Chouliaraki, Lilie, and Rafal Zaborowski. 2017. Voice and Community in the 2015 Refugee Crisis: A Content Analysis of News Coverage in Eight European Countries. International Communication Gazette 79: 6–7.
Collier, David, and James Mahoney. 1996. Insights and Pitfalls: Selection Bias in Qualitative Research. World Politics 49 (1): 59–91.
Cottle, Simon. 2005. Mediatized Public Crisis and Civil Society Renewal: The Racist Murder of Stephen Lawrence. Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 1 (1): 49–72.
Douglas, F. 2009. Scottish Newspapers, Language and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Ltd.
Esser, Frank. 2008. Spin Doctor. The International Encyclopedia of Communication, 4783–4787. London: Blackwell.
Galtung, J and Ruge, M. (1965). “The Structure of Foreign News. The Presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus Crises in Four Norwegian Newspapers”. Journal of Peace Research 2 (1): 64–91.
Harcup, Tony, and Diedre O’Neill. 2001. What Is News? Galtung and Ruge revisited. Journalism Studies 2 (2): 261–280.
———. 2017. What Is News? Journalism Studies 18 (12): 1470–1488.
Hopkins, Katie. 2015. Rescue Boats? I’d Use Gunships to Stop Migrants. The Sun, April 17.
Jenkins, Simon. 2021. Dedicated and Tireless, David Amess Was a Paragon of a Good Constituency MP. The Guardian, October 19.
Kaye, Ronald. 2013. An Analysis of Press Representation of Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. In Media and Migration, Constructions of Mobility and Difference. London: Taylor & Francis.
Kelsey, Darren. 2016. Hero Mythology and Right-Wing Populism: A Discourse-Mythological Case Study of Nigel Farage in the Mail Online. Journalism Studies 17 (8): 971–988.
Khan, Adnan. 2015. Alan Kurdi’s Father on His Family Tragedy: ‘I Should Have Died with Them’. The Guardian, December 22.
Kitis, E., and M. Milapedes. 1997. Read It and Believe It: How Metaphor Constructs Ideology in News Discourse. Journal of Pragmatics 28 (5): 557–590.
Lawson, Dominic. 2016. Jo’s Killing and the Scandal of the Way We Care for the Mentally Ill. Daily Mail, June 20.
———. 2021. The Life of Sir David Amess Is Proof It’s Wrong to Link ‘Right Wing’ with Uncaring. Daily Mail, October 18.
Lecka, Izabella, Viktoriya Pantyley, Liudmila Fakeyeva, and Alexandrina Cruceanu. 2021. ‘East’ in Europe—Health Dimension through the Lens of the UK Daily Mail and Statistical Facts. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 18 (7): 3705.
Luo, Yunjan, Hansel Burley, and Alexander Moe. 2018. A Meta-Analysis of News Media’s Public Agenda-Setting Effects, 1972–2015. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 96 (1): 150–172.
Martin, Daniel. 2016. PM Uses Twitter to Highlight Jo Cox’s Final Defence of Remain. Daily Mail, June 20.
Mayhew, F. 2018. National Newspaper ABCs. Press Gazette, May 17.
McLaughlin, Eugene. 2004. Recovering Blackness/Repudiating Whiteness. In Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice, 165. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Keefe, Anne. 2012. Media and Discourse Analysis. In The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.
Palmer, J. 2000. Spinning into Control: News Values and Source Strategies. London: Leicester University Press.
Pew Research Centre. 2018. News Media and Political Attitudes in the United Kingdom. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/fact-sheet/news-media-and-political-attitudes-in-the-united-kingdom. Accessed Dec 2021.
Ponsford, Dominic. 2015. Sun and Independent Launch Aylan-Inspired Refugee Campaigns as Mail Maintains Tougher Line. Press Gazette, September 4.
Ricketson, M. 2014. Telling True Stories: Navigating the Challenges of Writing Narrative Non-fiction. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Showalter, Elaine. 2002. Teaching Literature. London: Wiley-Blackwell.
Sinmaz, Emine. 2021. Man Denies Murdering MP Stabbed At Surgery. Daily Mail, December 22.
Slawson, Nicola. 2016. Jo Cox Charity Fund Passes £500,000 Target in a Day. The Guardian, June 18.
Smith, Matthew. 2017. How Left or Right-Wing Are the UK’s Newspapers? Yougov. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2017/03/07/how-left-or-right-wing-are-uks-newspapers. Accessed Dec 2021.
Spooner, C. 2012. Goth Culture. In A New Companion to the Gothic. Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Statista, March 2021. ‘Monthly reach of The Guardian in the United Kingdom from April 2019 to March 2020, by demographic group’. Statista.com. Retreived from https://www.statista.com/statistics/380687/the-guardian-the-observer-monthly-reach-by-demographic-uk/ August 2023
Tozer, James and Claire Duffin. 2016. Our 21st Century Good Samaritan. Daily Mail, June 20.
Van Looy, Jan, and Jan Baetens. 2003. Introduction: Close Reading Electronic Literature. Leuven: Leuven University Press.
Wilkes, David. 2021. Crusader of Backbenches Who Loved Strictly—But Not Eurovision. Daily Mail, October 16.
Zunino, Esteban. 2016. The Assessment of Political News in the Media Agenda: A Methodological Proposal for More Extensive Content Analysis. Communication and Society 29 (4): 235–253.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Waller, R., Erzan-Essien, A. (2024). Difficult Deaths and Awkward Agendas: How Mainstream News Media Negotiate Coverage of Politically Dissonant Victims. In: Coleclough, S., Michael-Fox, B., Visser, R. (eds) Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40732-1_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-40732-1_13
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-40731-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-40732-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)