Front page of suffering
“In the best of people suffering will prompt feelings of pity, mercy or compassion.” (Sanders, 2003, p95)
Tabloids are known to emphasize on strong emotions and pass them through the front pages of their publication, where there it would be excitement, sorrow, shock or scandal. Moreover they love to show it to us through images. In some ways we can draw a conclusion that the bigger the picture, the bigger the story.
When a tragedy like the Aylan Kurdi breaks the news, tabloids and other news publications are full of images from the scene and when a hard-hitting image is available it is very likely to be used as a front cover even if it may get a lot of criticism for it.
Sympathy and shock of the tragic fortune of this little boy is sending a strong message of heartbreak and sorrow to the audience, this connects the audience to the events, and crisis that is happening over seas. The picture featured on the front page of ‘The Daily Mail’ takes up the whole of the page with only one headline, no room for anything else. Message is clear this is the news we cannot avoid and we have to take this crisis seriously. The word catastrophe only emphasizes on how much the crisis has escalated and the image works as evidence to prove it. With a picture like this one there are no need for long headlines or introductory statements, there is even no need for the face of the dead boy to be visible as the expression of the officer carrying the boy while looking away says it all. It is in pictures like these that we can truly understand the meaning of the idiom – 'a picture is worth a thousand words', and tabloids use these kinds of images well when telling a story of a tragic loss like this one.