Representations of Events: Peaches Geldof's Death

The Sun Newspaper: 8th April

Two days after her death, The Sun represent the event as a 'shocking' death. The headline, 'Peaches dead at 25' is blunt and to the point, accompanied by a picture of Peaches looking well. They confirm that there were 'no drugs at house', however the fact that they put the word 'unexplained' in quote marks tells the audience two things; it has either been a direct quote from someone else, or that they as a newspaper have a glimmer of doubt as to whether it was actually unexplained or not. Here, we see them acknowledging her well known and controversial drug habit. They are also assuming that there is no other way she could have possibly died. This puts the question in the decoders minds 'unexplained, or was it?'. They reference her last movements on the social media site Twitter, which was a 'pic of her and tragic Paula'. They also mention how they are including 'Bob's tribute to his 'wildest, wittiest' girl'. Here, we can see a more sympathetic approach to her death, however their opinion of her death is still not clear. The focus of the subject is neither completely sympathetic or completely controversial. This is because of the selection of the words and elements of the event used, for example they cover both the idea of the 'unexplained or not' death, and a picture of the police at her house, however this is accompanied by the mention of her last tweet, including a picture of her and her mother being shown.

The Sun Newspaper: 24th August

Just a couple of months after the previous headline, The Sun present us with a less tragic and memorial feel to Peaches' death, with the headline 'Peaches' Heroin Secrets'. The picture this time is the young lady looking a little more ragged, but not a complete mess. By placing a picture of this sort next to the headline which implies the idea of 'secrets' the audience are led to believe the opinion that she was trying to hide her addiction, but when you look back, she didn't do a very good job of it. If this picture was in a different context there would be no question about her appearance. The Sun have also chosen to focus on her cause of death which was a drug overdose, and have organised the front cover in a way which emphasises all the worst elements of it, including a chain of negative lexis such as 'lied' and 'baby was in house with body'. They have also used colloquialisms to inform the readers that her overdose was '10 times bigger than Paula's', assuming that the audience know they are talking about her late mother. Furthermore they use the words 'hid stash', which reinforces the idea of the lies and that her drug addiction was a very personal element of her life which no one knew about. Throughout the course of this front cover, Peaches is not only branded as a drug addict, but a liar and a bad mother also.

Katie Hopkins' Tweets:

The advantage of social media sites such as Twitter is that they allow the decoders to become the encoders, and have their own input on the site, by sharing their views. Here, we can see the controversial Katie Hopkins talking about Geldof's death from her own Twitter account. Through her use of irony and exaggeration, Hopkin's creates a not only negative, but disrespectful view on Peaches' death. She starts by describing the syringe as 'fatal', which is followed by saying 'along with some sweets. She was taking care of her baby son after all.' By the end of the statement we realise that Katie does not in fact find the syringe 'fatal', but is using sarcasm and to juxtapose the last part of her tweet, to create comedy. This was shortly followed up by a second tweet in which she say asks the audience members to 'turn the tables'  and imagine it was her who had done the same thing. She ends the tweet with a bitter rhetorical question, asking 'would I be a fallen angel too?'. Here, we can see Hopkins' choice of language and the tone of her tweets represents Peaches' death as something that should not be getting spoken about the way it is, and that she should stop being referred to as a 'fallen angel' and that people should not be saddened by her death but instead accept that what she done was wrong.