Article Review: The Power Of Fear In The Toronto Star

The newspaper I have decided to analyze is The Toronto Star. The copy I have chosen was published on Wednesday, October 21, 2015. I discovered that The Toronto Star sows fear to its readers’ minds and expresses bias through photographs, and using words that are often exaggerated and headlines that are carefully formulated. One page in the newspaper consisted of three articles which headlines straightforwardly suggest fear. The political bias is also presented by the headlines they used when talking about the Liberal and Conservative Parties and Leaders. On Page A12 of The Toronto Star, fear was the most prevalent topic depicted. The article entitled “The Power of Pollution” is a perfect example of The Toronto Star’s fear cultivation tactic. The photo they used for this article was a photo of two kids who are obviously poor and struggling. This suggests that the topic they are explaining in the article is dangerous. The subheadline “Six toxins are wreaking havoc on almost 1 billion people around the world” uses the word “wreaking” and gave a number (1 billion). This increases the fear they

The articles on Page A8 with headlines “Harper-less Tories trudge back to the drawing board” and “Conservative strategies briefly considered ‘lame duck’ tactic” expands on how it is sort of a blessing that Stephen Harper has stepped down. The article talks about the upsides of Harper’s riddance. There is also a cartoon on Page A14, which illustrates a framed photograph of Harper and three people expressing the comment “Well, it’s not like the bar’s been set too high…”. This shows that The Toronto Star is not really in favour of Harper and that they are not supporters of the Conservative Party. The headlines The Toronto Star stated that relate to Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party present how the newspaper is not really on the said party’s