SEDIT online learning

6.4.1 Having a go 3

Here is an extract from a paper by MacMillan and Edwards (1999) that examined tabloid press coverage of the death of Diana.

Text 8: (Daily Star, 1 September, p. 4, by journalist Macer Hall)

1. Yesterday, Diana’s devastated brother, Earl Spencer,
2. revealed he had a premonition the paparazzi would
3. play a part in the Princess’s death.
4. He told reporters: “I always believed the Press would
5. kill her in the end.”

Without knowledge of the wider discursive context, it is difficult to know how to analyse this. Perhaps we might see it an example of how the tabloid press describes events in a sensational way: Diana’s brother had a premonition!

However, MacMillan and Edwards (1999) were interested in press coverage of the death of Princess Diana for a reason. Prior to Diana’s death, there had been extensive press coverage of her relationship with Dodi Fayed, and it was alleged that her car had crashed while being pursued by some press photographers (described as the paparazzi), who were trying to get pictures of the couple. MacMillan and Edwards (1999) were interested in how the press dealt with the matter of their own potential culpability in the process of reporting this, in a wider context of ongoing discussion about possible regulation of the press. It was in this context that the authors analysed form and function: how did the press describe events?; what did this particular version of events do (in relation to matters of potential culpability).

With this in mind, compare the description of Spencer’s statement (lines 2–3) with the quoted words (lines 4–5). The first is a description of the second, but it is not the same. It provides the reader with a particular way of understanding Spencer’s quote.