The way The Big Issue Represents the poor/working class

The way The Big Issue Represents the poor/working class

Mainstream red top is a tabloid newspaper characterised by sensationalism (provoke the audience with excitement) and is right and left wing. Examples of a red top newspaper are The Sun, the Daily Star, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Sport.  The Sun is a right wing newspaper and the Mirror is a left wing newspaper. Red top newspapers are written more for the working class, they are hysterical, shorter and less intellectually written. The idea is that they are written for the working class, so they write the articles as short as possible so that they can quickly read it. The Sun is famous for its pornographic elements and talk about beer prices. The Sun has a typical audience of unemployed or the working class. They portray immigrants as being the people who are responsible for all the bad things happening such as drugs and they present homeless British people in a better light such as getting into Cambridge University. 

A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long vertical pages; examples of a broadsheet newspaper are The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times. The Telegraph is a right wing newspaper and so is the Times. The broadsheet newspapers such as the daily telegraph have articles that are more targeted to upper class or middle class. The articles are longer and more intellectual and are about issues such as Brexit.  The Daily Telegraph has an audience of  'Older businessman with traditional views, who enjoys good food, likes cricket and supports the monarchy'. The broadsheet newspapers talk about issues to do with the working class and immigrants but they always relate it to the economy. They have stories that the homeless and working class wouldn’t necessarily read as they tend to be longer and more time consuming to read.

On the other hand, street newspapers such as the Big Issue, which is solely run by homeless or poor people, portray themselves differently than broadsheet and red top newspapers. They have articles about celebrities and gossip and are more of a social newspaper. The Big Issue differs from the red top and broadsheet newspapers because they have stories about homeless people and the poor needing help and bad stories to do with them. The Big Issue has articles about new opportunities and business solutions for poor people to help fix their lives and get back into the mainstream society. The political orientation of the big issue is how Brexit will affect them. Their ethics are purely to do with helping these vendors start to make an income to try and improve their lives. These differ to the other newspapers because they are trying to deliver the most up to date, high quality news and advertise to try and make big profits. The Sun supports the conservative political party (red top newspaper) and The Times supports the labor party.

The Daily Mail has a front cover article stating ‘Foreign workers get 3 in 4 new jobs’. They are anti immigration so this front cover could try and conduct fear into the working class. The Big Issue has vendors that are mainly Romanian immigrants and Ian Duncan Smith is saying that immigrants need to be deported. These make their political views quite similar.