Media Bias – Report

What happened?

On the 9th of August 2023, several hundred adolescents and young adults crowded Oxford Street,
London, and the closer area. Videos on social media platforms had called upon the viewers to commit
robbery in the local store of the retailer chain JD. Several other shops had to close or were affected,
and the police, who was present all day, arrested and fined people. This report compares the use of
language in terms of style, vocabulary etc. in different newspapers that covered the incident.

BBC

The BBC is known to be generally objective in their reporting of events. One article, published on the
09th of August, starts off by listing the number of people arrested and what they were arrested for.
Among these accusations are, for example, “suspicion of going equipped to steal”, “suspicion of
assaulting a police officer” and “suspicion of breaching the dispersal order”. These seem to be excerpts
from an official police statement, although it is not tagged as such. The paragraphs are kept short with
few adjectives and the authors make use of penologic terms. The focus is on visible, factual
information rather than on speculation. Furthermore, quotes of interviews with authorities like the
mayor of London are incorporated.

Daily Mail

According to the AllSides Media Bias ChartTM, Daily Mail is considered to be on the right spectrum of
political alignments. In their article from the 10th of August, the authors describe snapshots of the
afternoon, including scenes of fights between police and young people. Like the BBC report, they also
include the police statement giving information about how many people were arrested and why; and
while they don’t include the original source, they do use quotation marks. On the other hand, they use
a lot of emotionally connotated adjectives like “terrified” and “shocking”. The word “looting” appears
as well, though only on the context of fears of the attacks, not describing actual events.

Independent

The Independent, described as liberal and centre-left, use a different approach for their article, which
was published on the 11th of August. Focussing on the witnesses’ perspective, they interviewed a
woman who was “caught in the mayhem”. Her quote makes up a good bit of the text and underlines
emotional responses to the event. Numbers of arrests and names of the actual crimes are given towards
the end of the article, followed by a statement by London’s mayor. One of the most striking feature are
the words with which the authors describe the incident: “chaos”, “mayhem”, and even “amok”, which
are all connotated with a high degree of violence and even death. The article also highlights the fight
for power between attackers and authorities, saying that the police “were unable to stop” the teenagers.
References
LODGE, Matthew, and Tom Cotterill. “‘Ringleaders’ of Oxford Street Chaos Are Arrested Following
Day of Clashes between Youths and Police over Fears of TikTok-Inspired Looting - While
Prankster Mizzy Is Handed a Dispersal Order for Being There a Week after Failing to Appear in
Court.” Daily Mail, 10 Aug. 2023, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-
12391447/Ringleaders-Oxford-Street-chaos-arrested-following-day-clashes-youths-police-fears-
TikTok-inspired-looting-prankster-Mizzy-handed-dispersal-order-week-failing-appear-
court.html. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.

JACKSON, Liz, et al. “Oxford Street: Nine Arrested after Met Dispersal Orders.” BBC News, 9 Aug.
2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-66448113. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.

EVANS, Holly. “How a TikTok Craze Led to Five Hours of Chaos on London’s Busiest Shopping
Street.” Independent, 11 Aug. 2023, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/oxford-
circus-jd-robbery-rampage-tiktok-b2391303.html. Accessed 7 Nov. 2023.