Natalie Wolfe’s media report on the guilty plea of Rick Thorburn over the murder of his 12-year-old step-daughter Tiahleigh Palmer was published on the 19th of March 2018 on news.com.au under the title ‘Tiahleigh Palmer: Rick Thorburn to plead guilty to schoolgirl’s murder’. This journalist used the news values; betrayal of trust, violence, moral clarity, and simplification in order to gather the attention of the public and engage the reader. The use of these news values is effective in being able to get the attention of and engage the public in this crime. The ‘Betrayal of Trust’ news value is less about the media report and more about the crime itself, though the media does have an impact on how it is portrayed. Natalie writes about the crime in a way that portrays Rick as a guardian that has taken advantage of his duty of care to the victim, Tiahleigh, by murdering her and leaving her body to be found on the edge of a river (Wolfe, 2018). Thought the crime itself was not driven by the betrayal of trust, this angle on the crime is used by the writer to …show more content…
“Tiahleigh Palmer: Rick Thorburn to plead guilty to schoolgirl’s murder” (Wolfe, 2018) shows that Rick is the bad person in this crime. The victim of the crime is 12-year-old Tiahleigh. Natalie makes this obvious in the way she writes about the crime and the people involved. She portrays both the step-father and the rest of the family in a negative way while keeping Tiahleigh and her mother Cindy in a positive light. Natalie only discusses the crimes that the Thorburn family have committed in relation to the murder of Tiahleigh, and not how they treated her prior to her death, whether that be kindly or abusively. This lack of information could be purposely left out for the Thorburn family not to garner sympathy from people or the information has not been released to the public by the police or family members so there is nothing to write