“No Emotion, No Sympathy”: The Visual Construction of a Murder Trial in the Press

Abstract

This paper examines the visual press coverage of a notorious murder trial in three centre-right British newspapers. In August 2002, two young girls were abducted and murdered. The school caretaker Ian Huntley was convicted of murdering the girls and his girlfriend Maxine Carr was convicted of the lesser crime of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. She remains a national hate figure and was granted indefinite anonymity by the High Court for her own protection. This paper focuses on the visual representation of Carr, in an attempt to understand why public loathing towards her remains so intense considering she was found guilty of a relatively minor crime. A content analysis and qualitative visual analysis were undertaken on the trial coverage published in the Times, the Daily Mail and the Sun. The content analysis demonstrated that images of Carr appeared more frequently than images of Huntley, and were often larger and reproduced in colour. The qualitative visual analysis explored the placement and juxtaposition of the images with each other and with the headline text. We found disturbing evidence of newspaper formatting which could only encourage readers to draw misleading conclusions about Carr’s role in the crime. The visual coverage in the press ‘told’ a very different story than the one which formed the basis for her sentence. We argue the influence of newspaper page layout and image montages are too frequently overlooked by journalism scholars, but it should not be underestimated, particularly in terms of the reporting of high-profile crimes.

Key words: crime, murder, newspapers, visual analysis

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“No Emotion, No Sympathy”: The Visual Construction of a Murder Trial in the Press

In August 2002, two schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells were abducted

and murdered by Ian Huntley, the caretaker at their local school in Soham, in

Cambridgeshire, England. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment for their

murder in December 2003. His girlfriend Maxine Carr had been charged with two counts of

assisting an offender, but was cleared of these offences and found guilty of conspiring to

pervert the course of justice, for which she received a sentence of three and a half years in

prison. She was released on licence in May 2004. In February 2005, Carr was granted

indefinite anonymity by the High Court. Only three other individuals have ever been

granted indefinite anonymity: Mary Bell1, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables2. Maxine

Carr is unique. She is the only one not to have committed a murder.

Public hatred for Carr has been both extreme and transparent. The decision to

enforce an anonymity order was taken because of concerns that there was ‘a real and

significant risk of injury or… worse…killing, if the injunction [was] not granted’ (Edward

Fitzgerald QC, quoted in the Guardian, 25 February 2005:6). The threat remains tangible, as

the number of ‘mistaken identity’ crimes since Carr’s release can confirm, ‘[a] mob in

Leicester threatened to firebomb the home of a family they believed was sheltering Carr… a

woman was spat at in a supermarket in Chepstow and a woman in East Kilbride became the

victim of a hate campaign with a mob gathering outside her home (Guardian, 25 February

2005:6).’ Though the crimes of Ian Huntley were despicable in the extreme, her crime, that

of perverting the course of justice, should not merit such revulsion. Why is public loathing

for Carr just as intense?

Coverage of Maxine Carr by the mass media provides an influential explanation for

this phenomenon. Carr’s lawyer, Mr Fitzgerald QC certainly believed the media had been

instrumental in causing the public’s extreme reaction to his client, stating at the injunction

hearing, ‘the tone and content of much of what has been published does increase the risk

both of physical attack and of harassment’, citing evidence of remarks in internet chatrooms

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which ‘linked to particular unfounded allegations that have been made in the press’ (Dyer,

Guardian, 25 February 2005: 6).

Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights guarantees every defendant

the right to a fair trial, and this article has been incorporated into English law by the Human

Rights Act of 1988. This complements the presumption of innocence which has been part of

English Common Law for many decades. Article 6 stipulates that those charged with any

criminal offence ‘shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law’, and this

basic human right underpins the 1981 Contempt of Court Act. The Contempt of Court Act is

designed to prevent trial by media. The unenviable position in which Carr finds herself begs

the question: how could any contemporaneous trial reportage be so damaging as to warrant

a Contra-Mundum injunction of indefinite anonymity without once being held in contempt?

Concerns about media coverage of this case were widespread, even before the trial

began. Lawyers for Huntley and Carr argued that their clients could not be tried fairly

because they had been vilified in sections of the media. During legal argument the judge

was asked to examine 25 volumes of press cuttings. In his judgment he acknowledged that

the media had carried stories ‘calculated to undermine their [Huntley and Carr's] credibility.

The stories are written in emotional, sensational and lurid language’ (Morris, 2003:6), but

he believed enough time had passed for jurors not to be affected by what they may have

seen or read.

However, he opened the trial with a warning to the media: ‘[i]t is an obligation not

merely owed to the court but to the community and to those most acutely involved: the

parents, friends and relatives of the deceased. It is surely not to be imagined that anyone

would, with their interests at heart, want to inhibit a fair trial[…]Highly coloured, highly

charged inflammatory reporting is not just a breach of the Contempt of Court Act, but is a

breach of the media's responsibility to all involved and to the public’ (Press Association,

2003). The Judge also asked the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith to head an inquiry

investigating the media’s coverage of the two offenders.

This study focuses on the visual coverage of the Soham murder trial in the centre-

right national press, exploring ways in which Carr was portrayed through visual imagery in

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comparison with Huntley. Whereas processing text requires time and dedicated mental

consideration, a visual, or collection of visuals can be read instantaneously, allowing the

viewer to draw immediate conclusions. However, these conclusions, though seemingly

logical in construction can often be entirely false. While acknowledging that it may not

appear worthwhile to demonstrate yet again that coverage of the Soham trial was far from

satisfactory, we focus on a commonly overlooked aspect of media coverage: the formatting

of newspaper pages, particularly the combination of visuals and headline text. Allowing

ambiguous imagery to become a factor for claims of contemptuous coverage would be very

difficult, but the way newspapers are able to use visuals to tell misleading stories has been

overlooked, both in terms of legal affairs, but also as a central area of interest within

journalism studies.

There were two ways in which the newspapers we studied portrayed Carr: firstly, by

drawing on stereotypical depictions of female criminals, particularly using Myra Hindley as

a ‘template’ (Kitzinger, 2000); secondly, by juxtaposing newspaper images which

encouraged a dominant reading of Carr’s guilt as Huntley’s accomplice. Throughout the

coverage we analysed, Carr was portrayed alongside Huntley, with the same level of

interest. Just as the newspapers visually examined his life story, his motivations, and his

lifestyle, the same questions were visually asked of Carr, positioning her on an equal footing

with Huntley. The result was that the visual images ‘told’ a very different story to the

accompanying newspaper articles, whose detailed texts spelled out the differences in their

crimes. Significantly, there were no such qualifications in their visual representation, with

Carr in fact featuring more frequently than Huntley.

News Photographs as Objective

The power of photographs ultimately lies in their ability to function on two levels

simultaneously (Barthes, 1977; Sekula, 1974; Tagg, 1988; Zelizer 1995, 1998). On the one

hand, photographs work denotatively, appearing to ‘naturally’ display real life events. On

the other hand, images work connotatively, drawing on broad symbolic systems, visually

representing much larger hidden codes of meaning. In Image, Music, Text, Roland Barthes

(1977) explored how myth affects the connotative/denotative interpretations of the

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photograph. He stated that all of the imitative arts, such as drawing or painting, contain two

systems of meaning: (a) their denotative meaning, which Barthes defined as ‘the analogue

itself’; the actual ‘thing’ that is being imitated; and (b) the connotative message, defined as

‘the manner in which the society… communicates what it thinks of [the object]’ made up

from stock stories, stereotypes or genres (Barthes, 1977: 17). However, the press

photograph seems at first glance to be unique in that it has a certain denotative meaning, but

is devoid of any connotative system; it simply ‘is’ the thing that it portrays.

Hall (1981) reiterated Barthes theory that the photograph signifies through ‘the

lexicon of expressive features distributed throughout the culture of which the reader is a

member’ (p.227). These codes depend for their decipherment upon the reader’s ability to

‘resolve a set of gestural, non-linguistic features… into a specific expressive configuration’

(p.227). Once interpreted the photograph becomes a sign of these same interpretations. It

becomes what Hall calls the ‘index of an ideological theme’ (p.238). A photograph imbued

and read within the dominant ideology will itself become expressive of those ideas; will

solidify them, then seem to connote them inherently.

Hall (1981) argues that the dominant ideology of a society is that which seems

pedestrian in nature; ‘[w]e have seen it before, a thousand different signs and messages

seem to signify the same ideological meaning’ (p.239). In representing the world, news

photographs become something different; they become part of the ‘great storehouse’ of

information; another brick in the wall of representation, and a tool to make us interpret the

world in a particular way. Like Barthes, Hall argues that this ideological function has

become naturalised; that the ‘image loses its motivation and appears naturally to have

selected itself’ (1981: 247).

Accepting this to be the case, how do readers process a ‘naturally selected’

photograph, when it appears alongside text which challenges the image? The relationship

between words and images in news texts has been understudied. As Zelizer (1998) writes

‘we still do not know enough about how images help record public events, about whether

and in which ways images function as better vehicles of proof than words, and about which

vehicles – word or image – takes precedence in situations of conflict between what the

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words tell and the pictures show us’ (p.2). The assumption is that images are regarded as

secondary to the texts and considered as having a merely supportive role in terms of

emphasising the messages inherent in the texts.

Portrayal of Female Criminals

Part of this ‘great storehouse’ of information is the entrenched portrayal of female criminals

through the ages – the stereotypical. As Dyer (1993) argues, the social stereotype can act as

a mental pigeon-hole. It can, and does create a ‘short-cut’; an overtly ‘simple, striking,

easily grasped form of representation’ (p.14). What is produced is a kind of condensation;

the evaporation of more complex narratives that may require some knowledge of history or

social, religious/cultural background, into, what Dyer, calls a consensus. ‘“This is what

everyone…thinks members of such-and-such a social group are like”, as if these concepts…

were spontaneously arrived at by all… independently and in isolation’ (p.14).

Myra Hindley has come to represent the archetypal female criminal. Along with Ian

Brady, Hindley was responsible for the murders of five children between 1963 and 1965.

Birch (1993) has explored her representation in If Looks Could Kill. She argues that what

Hindley now represents, the ‘symbolic weight’ she carries, ‘far exceeds the crimes of two

individuals at a particular place and time’ (p.33). Hindley has passed smoothly into folklore,

her image, iconic now; the dyed blonde hair, the impassive stare, ‘what she herself has

called “that awful mug shot” connotes ‘modern affectless evil in a way that the

contemporary photograph of Brady never has’ (French, 1996: 38).

The image of Hindley has become entangled with the very worst representations of criminal

women; worst because of the repugnant crimes that they signify, and worst because of their

abject simplicity. Hindley’s position in the cannon of evil is concrete. Her image has

become a tool with which we understand and somehow comprehend the incomprehensible.

When a man offends he can be sure that his crime will be ‘both imaginable and possibly

even seen as human,’ after all, argues Morrissey (2003), ‘male crime in all forms, from

fictional to factual, is frequently articulated, debated, portrayed, glorified, even fantasised’

(2003, p16). Conversely, the actions of the female offender connote, what Helena Kennedy

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has called the ‘profound expression of our worst fears about the social fabric falling apart’

(quoted in Meyers & Wight, 1996: xiv).

Winter (2002) has carried out research into the possible engendering and

narrativising methods used in judicial summing up in the trials of Myra Hindley and

Rosemary West. Her research reveals that when women commit acts of violence their

subsequent representation falls into three distinct categories. The offender is either a lunatic

(hysterical, suffering from pre-menstrual tension or Battered Woman Syndrome), a monster

(the inadequate mother, the lesbian, the just plain evil), or an idiot (the dupe, the tool carrier,

the confidante). These categories parallel the three different ways Carr was portrayed.

Montage Theory

During the 1920’s Lev Kuleshov began experimenting with raw film stock in order to

determine the general rules which governed film communication. He took unedited footage

of the expressionless face of one of the popular actors at the time and inter-cut it with three

highly emotive images; a bowl of soup, a dead woman, and a child. When the film was

shown to a randomly selected audience they reported ‘seeing’ the actor’s expression change,

in relation to the inter-cut images, to whatever emotion was deemed appropriate. Kuleshov

concluded that the image has two inherent signifying values: ‘[t]hat which it possesses

itself, and that which it acquires when placed in relation to others’ (Cook, 1990).

Huxford (2001) states that the photograph has long been upheld in the press as the

epitome of ‘objectivity’, not least because of its claims to purely denotative significance, but

also due to its reliance on context to make meaning. However, over the years journalists

have found other ways of injecting more than simple referential meanings (2001: 45). These

new meanings he says, go beyond the referential by ‘underpinning or contradicting the

photographs’ indexical features’ while still being received as objective by the reader (p.45).

Huxford classifies three methods of this type of signification, two will form the basis of this

analysis: temporal and metaphorical. Temporal signification utilises different sequences of

photographs, or differing shaped or cropped images to imply the passage of time. Visual

metaphors, created by juxtaposing images can imply relations between events and

individuals that have no bearing in reality.

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The image analysis contained here uses these two codes of connotation theorised by

Huxford in order to explore what kind of representation is communicated with reference to

Maxine Carr. The analysis explores how these connotations are understood through the use

of Carr’s image, the juxtaposition of this image with others and the relation these images

have to the headline text. The importance of Huxford’s work is to underline the fact that ‘in

seeking to supply “visual evidence”, journalists routinely create, through symbolism,

photographic validation that they do not possess’ (2001: 65). These codes often go un-

noticed on the page; their constructed nature assimilated into notions of common-sense

(2001: 67). It is this, coupled with stereotypical notions of female criminality that have

underlined the representation of Maxine Carr.

Methodology

This study includes a quantitative content analysis combined with a qualitative visual

analysis to examine the visual press coverage of Maxine Carr in the Soham murder trial.

Three newspapers were chosen to form the basis for this analysis: a ‘traditional broadsheet’

the Times, a ‘mid-brow’ newspaper, the Daily Mail and a tabloid, the Sun. All newspapers

are published nationally on a daily basis. Each also has its equivalent Sunday edition; the

News of the World, Mail on Sunday and Sunday Times, however, these papers were

excluded, to prevent repetitious coverage. Creating a sample from the ten British daily

newspapers is always challenging, because of the different format types and ideological

positions. In this particular study, we decided to include different examples of format type,

keeping the ideological position of the newspapers as similar as possible, by choosing three

centre-right newspapers. Using the newspaper database Lexis/Nexis, the search term

‘Huntley OR Carr AND Soham’ between 1 November 2003 and 31 December 2003 was

used to create a database of all articles referencing the trial. This sample period was chosen

to coincide with the trial which began on the 3 November and ended on the 17 December

2003. The additional seventeen days served as a ‘buffer’ to catch any prior build-up or

subsequent comment. In total 371 newspaper articles met the search criteria (78 in the Daily

Mail, 170 in the Sun and 123 in the Times). Using the information provided by the database,

the original articles and their accompanying images were located.

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Content Analysis

A content analysis of the relative size, number and content of images in this sample

was carried out initially, in order to explore ‘how much’ coverage the Huntley and Carr

received, because as Huxford (2001) explains, in terms newspapers imagery, ‘relative size

equates to relative importance. In terms of photographic representation, it signifies that the

largest person in a layout of photographs will consistently be the central figure in the story’

(2001: 62). Individual images were coded according to their content, and the number of

depictions of each character was calculated. All images of Huntley and Carr, separately,

together or with additional individuals were coded. If Huntley appeared alone then this

constituted one image of Huntley, however, if Huntley appeared with Carr (in the same

image, photographed together) this constituted one image of Huntley and one image of Carr.

In addition, each overall image was measured (irrespective of the number of individual

image elements contained). Cut out images, or images of undefined, spherical or hap-hazard

framing were measured from their widest and tallest points. Overlapping, superimposed or

compound images were treated separately and measured accordingly. In total, there were

228 individual images of the two offenders.

Visual Analysis

This study uses the basic rules of image signification theorised by Lev Kuleshov

during the 1920s. As already stated, Kuleshov concluded through his work with raw film

stock that the photographic image has two inherent values; ‘[t]hat which it possess itself,

and that which it acquires when placed in relation to others’ (quoted in Cook 1990).

However, Kuleshov was working with the signifying properties of film. Newspaper

discourse contains another important factor: text. The image analysis undertaken here takes

as its basis three given assumptions; (a) that meaning (in terms of the use of images) in

newspaper discourse is constructed through the image itself (its contents, framing, colour,

quality, and composition), (b) its relation to other images and (c) their relation to the

headline text.

We deliberately omitted the article text from this study, believing that headlines

interplay more directly with images, contextualising them within the newspaper layout;

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helping to form impressions or opinions more immediately. Article text, being smaller,

longer and more openly narrativised is not so quickly assimilated. This is not to say that the

text does not have an effect upon the reception of images, but to state that this effect is not

instantaneous; it must first be read, digested and internalised.

The image analysis contained here uses the temporal, spatial and metaphorical

codes of connotation theorised by Huxford (2001) in order to explore how these categories

are communicated with reference to Maxine Carr. The analysis will explore how these

connotations are understood through the use of Carr’s image, the juxtaposition of this image

with others and the relation these images have to the headline text. This same technique will

be used to show how these methods of connotation can, and do imply ideological positions

or judgements that would be in violation of the 1981 Contempt of Court act if they were

communicated texturally.

Image Size and Frequency

In this sample the image of Huntley appeared 124 times (the Sun 76, the Daily Mail

33, the Times 15). The image of Carr appeared 104 times (the Sun 53, the Daily Mail 34,

the Times 17), and while the Sun included 23 fewer images on Carr than Huntley, the Daily

Mail and the Times included slightly more images of Carr than Huntley. While these figures

are surprising, it is in the size of these images that real discrepancies between the amount of

newspapers space given to Carr and Huntley are most apparent.

As Table 1 illustrates, in total, photographs of Maxine Carr took up more space in

the Daily Mail, and the and the Times, than photographs of Ian Huntley. In the Sun, the total

size of all photographs of Huntley was 10947 cm2 compared with 8799 cm2 for Carr,

however, when this figure was divided by the number of individual photographs, an image

of Maxine Carr was actually 22cm2 larger than Ian Huntley. Overall, in the Sun and the

Times, photographs of Carr were on average larger than photographs of Huntley, and in the

Daily Mail, the difference was only three squared centimetres. The difference in the Times

was the most striking, with a difference of 46cm2. Across all three sample newspapers the

average size for a single image of Huntley was 166cm2. The average size of a single image

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of Carr was 187cm2. In this sample images of Carr are therefore on average 21cm2 larger

than those of Huntley.

INSERT Table 1

This simple content analysis provides the foundation for our discursive visual analysis.

There is no denying visual coverage of Maxine Carr was substantial, with larger, more

colourful graphics, and in two newspapers more images of Carr than Huntley. This seems

astonishing considering the crimes with which they were individually charged, and

ultimately sentenced. In the following section, we explore those images further,

emphasising the ways in which the images worked alongside one another, and were

contextualised by the headline. It is clear that newspaper photo editors decided to rely on

conventional portrayals of female criminals, emphasising stereotypical ideas surrounding

idiocy, lunacy and monstrosity. In addition, page layouts, photographic montages and

headlines narrativised the events, placing Maxine Carr in a central role, elevating her actions

above those with which she was ultimately charged.

Carr as Idiot

Figure 1 is an image of domination. It is a replication of a photograph printed in the

Daily Mail on the day after sentencing (18 December 2003: 24). Huntley stands central in

the frame, while the frame stands central to the page.

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FIGURE 1: Huntley stands between Maxine Carr (left) and his mother Lynda Huntley

(right)

He is the centre column; the tallest part of the image. On either side he clasps ‘the

two women in his life’, Maxine Carr to the left, and Lynda Huntley, his mother to the right.

Huntley holds Carr tightly, with his right arm over her shoulder, pushing her into his body,

owning her. Carr’s own hands are trapped helplessly against Huntley’s chest. With his left

arm thrown over her shoulder, Huntley clasps his mothers hand, while she, in turn holds his

forearm. She stands upright, facing the camera. Once again, Carr’s agency is dissolved. She

is crushed to Huntley. The centre of this image is dominated by Huntley’s bunched fist, as

he holds on to his mother, its size and strength in contrast with Carr’s smaller, weaker and

immobile hand. Lynda Huntley, although held, is not controlled. In clasping Huntley’s hand

and restraining his forearm she retains her strength. Huntley’s arm confines her movement

but only as long as she permits it. Carr is spellbound; controlled by Huntley. She would

have followed him anywhere and met every command. However, the point to be made here

is not what these people were actually thinking at this precise moment or the significance of

this photograph in the ‘real’ world in which it was taken, but its meaning within the

constructed world of the newspaper. In the constructed world this is an image of Huntley’s

domination and control over Carr. But also an image of Lynda’s failing control over

Huntley. The importance lies in how these small blocks of association build into a solid and

seemingly innate representation of a complex human being. The amalgamation of images,

constantly reiterated, has the ability to construct Carr in a particular light.

Carr as Lunatic

Other images portrayed Carr as more than a dupe, recalling the ‘lunatic’ template of

female criminality. Here the comparison is not with Myra Hindley, but with Lady Macbeth.

In another double page spread from the Sun, the full page headline shrieks ‘Carr scrubbed

tiles so hard she said paint was coming off’ with an accompanying large image of Carr,

defiant, cold and outwardly calm (7 November 2003:6-7). She looks directly at the reader,

smirking, as if underneath this cold exterior beats the heart of a whirling lunatic. While what

we see is Carr, upright, neat and presentable, the image conjured is of a woman dishevelled,

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on hands and knees desperately stripping paint from blooded walls. The lunatic imagery was

underlined by one recurring image of Carr. In the Daily Mail, beneath the headline, ‘Maxine

talked about the girls in the past tense, then laughed,’ we see Carr caught in her own web

(See Figure 2). The image suggests that once exposed the mask falls away and we see the

real Maxine; a grinning, tongue curling, duplicitous gargoyle who laughs in the face of

other’s pain. This was a photograph which clearly appealed to photo editors in all three

newspapers, as the same image appeared in the other two newspapers on other dates,

although they were outside the sample period (Times , 25 February 2005, p. 3, Sun 15

January 2004).

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FIGURE 2: The Daily Mail, 21 November 2003, p.19

Carr as Monster

The most entrenched template for representing female offenders is of the monster

(Birch, 1993; Cameron and Fraser, 1987; Carlen, 1985; French, 1996; Knelman, 1998;

Morrissey, 2003, Smart, 1977a, 1977b) and the archetypal violent ‘monstrous’ woman

remains Myra Hindley. Maxine Carr did not commit any violent crime, but she suffered

guilt through association, not just from Ian Huntley, but from Myra herself. On 4 December

2003, a full front page spread in the Sun showed Carr, in half profile looking to her right

staring blankly into space. Though she is facing forward she does not look directly at the

reader, but drops her eyes slightly.

Here is a photograph of Carr associated with the iconic image of Hindley from

1965. But for those readers unable to draw that connection, a smaller, updated image of

Hindley is printed in the corner of the page. Along this image a banner headline presented in

block capitals, coloured red and outlined in white, screams, ‘MYRA MK II’. The Sun does

not directly compare this fresh faced image of Carr with the terrible, platinum haired, devil

eyed Myra that was her own unfortunate emblem, but with the withered, middle-aged and

beaten Myra, just months before her death. The effect of this is to imply that as the old evil

dies, the new takes its place. It is as if there will always be a Myra; that evil this powerful is

somehow immortal. It does not grow out of human nature, but jumps from body to body.

Carr as Accomplice

These examples demonstrate Carr’s portrayal through established stereotypes of

female criminality, while referencing, sometimes subtly, sometimes less so, previous female

murderers. In the following section, we emphasise how images were juxtaposed, cropped

and manipulated in order to portray Maxine as taking an active part in the murders.

On the 18 October 2003, the Times published a double page spread on pages 10-11.

In the far top left a mid to small size reproduction of Huntley appears. The image is in black

and white, small and inconsequential. To his right the main headline reads, ‘[t]he strange

and tangled past of a man who lost his bride to his brother’. Below this an additional

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headline reads, ‘[h]e took a girl aged eleven to an orchard and sexually assaulted her. She

ran, he gave chase and threatened to kill her if she told’. Surprisingly however, half of the

adjacent page is taken up with Carr’s mug shot, in colour, above the headline, ‘[a] quiet

home-loving girl with the fatal knack of falling for the wrong man’. Below this a second

image of the young Carr appears. What is interesting here is the imbalance between image

size, quality and number with the content of the stories they complement. Though two

headlines here concern Huntley, and Huntley alone, two of the three images seen depict

Carr. Over half of the text across these pages is copy concerning Huntley, yet his image,

relatively small, black and white, is pushed into the far corner; sidelined by a considerably

larger advertisement for PC World. The colour images of Carr, while only accompanying an

approximately 1000 word fairly inconsequential biography piece cover four times as many

square cm as Huntley’s (Huntley image was 234cm2, while the two Carr images totalled

852cm2).

Carr’s image is repetitively larger than those of Huntley and reproduced in colour,

often when the story itself has little or no discernible link with Carr whatsoever. Another

example is from the Daily Mail (27 November, 2003). The front page is divided in two,

vertically. The left half is taken up by the headline which reads, ‘Huntley had been held on a

rape charge’. This is clearly a story about Ian Huntley’s past, yet it is Carr, in full colour

that is pictured across the entire right half of the page. Though this particular example

stands out due to its striking oddity it is not, perhaps, damaging in any real sense. However,

omit the word ‘Huntley’ and this kind of representation through text and image association

becomes, not just damaging but may fall into the realms of contempt of court.

Another example takes these themes, but exemplifies them (see Figure 3). In the top

left hand corner of a double page spread from The Sun, a (‘non-connected’) headline reads,

‘2 baby murders defy belief – QC’ (8 December 2003: 8-9). At the bottom right Holly and

Jessica are superimposed across the image of Huntley. The right hand page shows Carr

holding the now infamous note given to her by the two schoolgirls. Below, a sub-heading

reads ‘Holly card was a talisman… you knew she’d died.’ To her left a large headline reads

‘you lied and lied’.

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FIGURE 3: The Sun, 8 December 2003, pp.8-9

The point to be made here concerns the image chosen to represent Huntley; in profile staring

directly at the image of Carr. This layout implies narrative progression. The top left hand

corner concerns the death of two children. The eye moves instinctively to the small children

below (though, it should be said, not those of the previous story). These children having

been superimposed upon the image of Huntley, whom we know to be the accused in this

case, cements their association. Huntley then looks to Carr. Carr, for her part, stares at the

reader; she forms the end of the story. The effect of this narrative play of images represents

Huntley as merely a player in a larger story, the dénouement of which still belongs to Carr.

The most striking example of this kind appears in Figure 4. To the left of this centre

spread from the Daily Mail (2 December, 2003: 6-7) the headline reads, ‘I picked Jessica

up, took her downstairs and went back for Holly. I put the bodies in my car and drove.’ To

the immediate right of the headline is a large, colour image of Carr. To her right a smaller

picture of the house and car she shared with Huntley appears. Both images are

superimposed across an image of the woods in which Holly and Jessica’s bodies were

found.

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FIGURE 4: Daily Mail ,2 December, 2003: 6-7

Why, when this headline directly quotes Huntley’s court testimony does it appear in

conjunction with an image of Carr? The tiny caption to Carr’s right reads, ‘Maxine Carr…

she knew nothing about the deaths of Holly and Jessica.’ These tiny words say what was

proved; what could not be held in contempt. The construction of this page implies quite the

opposite; whether intentionally or unintentionally, that it was Carr, and not Huntley, who

played the larger role. There is no image of Huntley in this set; no mention of his name. The

only context in which to read the first person ‘I’ of the headline is with reference to Carr:

Carr picked Jessica up, Carr took her downstairs. Behind her the ditch where she hid the

bodies, to her right the house where the deed was committed and outside the infamous red

Ford Fiesta, consistently associated with Carr throughout this sample.

Again, whether intentionally or unintentionally Figure 4 represents pictorially the

major aspects of the crime: the crime scene, the transportation, the grave, the confession,

each, a crucial, unforgettable part of the murder investigation, and each unequivocally

aligned, associated and inextricable linked more directly with Carr than with Huntley.

17

Forced inference through the lack of solid context is used repeatedly to hint at ideas

and opinions that would be illegal if expressed through text. If expressed through images,

image association and image and text there can be no proof that these messages are anything

other than the overtly subjective interpretations of the reader; a result of what was seen,

rather than what was shown. In another example from the Sun (See Figure 5) under the

stand-first, ‘[t]he Soham Murder Case: Jury Sworn In’, a large headline reads ‘NO

EMOTION, NO SYMPATHY’ (5 November, 2005: 8-9). To the left of the headline two

equal sized black and white images of Carr and Huntley are positioned over a list of the

charges against them, making it appear as if both defendants were charged with five

separate counts. Visually, there crimes appear to have similar levels of seriousness. The two

defendants are on an equal visual level, just as the two girls are, positioned beside one

another in their matching red football shirts. Once again, due to the lack of context within

the headline the reader must ask ‘who’ is being described; who has ‘no emotion, no

sympathy’? Subconscious association pulls the images of Carr and Huntley across to fill this

contextual gap. An impression of the defendant’s characters has been manufactured through

association. Associated with the sentence, ‘no emotion, no sympathy’, they are represented

as a particular type of person; a person, in short, much more like a murderer than the rest of

us. In fact this headline refers to Mr Justice Moses’ warning to the jury; telling them that

they must not ‘fall prey to emotion or sympathy’ and try the defendants only according to

the evidence.

18

FIGURE 5: Sun, 5 November, 2005: 8-9

The power of this kind of signification lies in its ability to push the reader to a particular

conclusion without their knowledge; to persuade the reader that this or that message was not

constructed by the newspaper, but was gleaned and interpreted in their own unique way

through instinct. These images promote the impression that the associations contained are

‘plain to see’ or ‘common-sense’; that it is the reader who gleans, interprets and eventually

creates meaning. In reality the reader is guided at every turn into thinking a specific way,

conforming to a specific set of values and accepting some things as ‘truth’ and others as

‘lies’ all the time believing that these values come from within.

Discussion

The main objective of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act is to avoid trial by media.

For journalists, the most important part of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act is set out in

sections 1 and 2; The Strict Liability Rule and its limitations. In cases where legislation calls

for strict liability the prosecution has no need to prove intent ; that the act was committed is

enough to secure a conviction. In contempt of court hearings strict liability guarantees that

‘where a publication creates a substantial risk of serious prejudice to proceedings... it will be

no defence that such an affect was not intended’ (Crone, 2002:142). Of specific relevance is

that under the 1981 act, any reportage that portrays a defendant as ‘the type of person who

would commit the crime with which he is charged or which suggests that he should not be

believed is likely to attract a charge of contempt [our italics]’ (Crone, 2002:148).

This last point is crucial, because as the above analysis has demonstrated, Carr and

Huntley are equally represented as exactly the type of monsters to have committed such

crimes. However this kind of prejudicial contemporaneous reportage did not bring a halt to

proceedings because those opinions deemed contemptuous by this study were

communicated via indirect means; through the vagaries of metaphorical signification rather

than plain text. It must also be stated that the current climate of heightened emotion

regarding child safety, and the massive public outcry in reaction to previous murders against

children meant it would have been almost impossible for a judge to allow the case to

collapse (Critcher, 2002; Kitzinger, 2004, Wardle 2006, 2007).

19

Newspaper image discourse is becoming increasingly complex in its construction.

The use of the ‘naturally’ denotative and therefore ‘objective’ nature of the press

photograph acts as a mask for political/ideological bias, not just in the reporting of crime,

but in newspaper discourse more generally. The very systems used to promote a particular

agenda are also those which protect from reproach. How can it be the newspaper’s fault if a

particular opinion was gleaned from a particular picture, even when cropped, juxtaposed

with others, juxtaposed with text, denied context and repeated relentlessly?

Zelizer (1998) has argued that the collective memory has no beginning, no end, is

unpredictable and completely irrational (1998: 4). Nowhere is this more startlingly

exemplified than in the formation of the eternal female criminal; she is the weak, the strong;

the dolt, the manipulator; the leader, the follower; the prisoner, the jailor; the nun and the

whore, she can be all of these things, and all of them at once. Carr can be the monstrous

demon who ‘told [Huntley] to burn the bodies’, she can be ‘the misfit who lied for her

lover’; she can be the lost child in search of a father while still scrubbing blood from the

tiles. They can all exist together in the same representation, unquestioned, unchallenged.

She told him to do it; he made her do it; they did it together! The connotative significance of

any image of female criminality does not spring unaided from the page, but is injected

through the passage of history.

These images of Carr undoubtedly had a power. They were frequently repeated,

they were large, they were often in colour, but more than that, they often depicted Carr as

the ultimate female criminal. She was not portrayed as a perjurer; she was portrayed as an

accomplice to a murderer; connoted as the next Myra Hindley. An analysis of individual

images of Carr would have reached the same conclusions, but what we have shown is that

by studying newspaper layouts, it becomes evident very quickly that relationships between

visuals and texts, can tell entirely misleading stories. Irrespective of the small text which

told the truth, the visuals weaved a tale of a lying, manipulative woman, who played a

central part of the murder of the two girls.

20

Myth, says Barthes (1957) ‘is neither a lie nor a confession: it is a distortion’

(p.129). What Barthes calls ‘neither norism’ enjoins disparate forms, systems or ideas in

order to blend them with pre-existing attitudes and behaviour. For Bathes, myth is

depoliticised speech; speech that has been naturalised and thereby made to appear as if it is

(a) a product of the natural world, and (b) unattached to the historical framework out of

which it emerged. ‘Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all history. In it, history

evaporates’ (p.151).

Once the political nature of the rhetoric becomes naturalised and therefore invisible

it takes on the mantle of common sense; innate and inherent rather than subjective and

subject to change. It is, says Barthes, ‘at the same time imperfectible and unquestionable;

time or knowledge will not make it better or worse’ (p.130). Research into the power of

these visual images carried out by Domke et al. (2001) suggested that the widely held notion

that ‘vivid images drive public opinion’ was overly simplistic (p.131). They argue that at the

core of each significant news event are certain iconic images said to have driven, or affected

public opinion. These images, whatever they might be, are used as mental categories and

significantly influence the way in which ‘new information… [is] perceived, stored, recalled

and subsequently used’ (p.134). However, it is their contention that ‘news photographs can

trigger a complex set of cognitive and affective processes, and that these intertwine closely

throughout people’s mental frameworks to shape information processing and decision

making’ (p.149). In short, what a photograph ‘connotes’ depends upon the individual mental

framework through which it is perceived.

This study has attempted to show the ‘power’ images in news can have on

representation. Its aim was, in part, to explore how techniques of image construction,

juxtaposition and manipulation can force specific inferences while apparently maintaining

ideals of journalistic ‘objectivity’. We have argued that with regards to the media

representation of Maxine Carr during the Soham murder trial the result was one approaching

total annihilation. That this reportage was in contempt of court seems unequivocal. It is the

manner in which contempt emerged that is interesting. Here it is almost metaphorical

contempt, implicit and sub-psychological. This is no less damaging, in fact, as we have

21

already argued, due to its ‘naturalised’, masked connotative signification it may be more

damaging. However, whether coverage is overt or implicit Strict Liability states that

prosecution in contempt cases do not need to prove intent. Whether inference in this case

forced a particular ideology or not is utterly irrelevant; it is the effect, not the intent that

matters.

The strict demands of any legal document, means it is unlikely that the subjective

realm of newspaper visuals will ever be considered for judgement through the Contempt of

Court Act. However, in our opinion, perceptions of Maxine Carr and her role in the murders

of the two children were significantly influenced by the visual coverage in the press.

Conclusion

In November 1968, Raymond Morris was convicted of the murder of Christine

Darby in August 1967. He was interviewed in the first week after her murder, as his car met

the description of a key eye witness, and two times subsequently. Although convinced of his

guilt, the police were unable to charge him as his wife consistently provided an alibi for

him. In November 1967, after five hours of police questioning she broke down and admitted

she had lied. She was not charged with any crime. While the case did receive a certain level

of publicity, Carole Morris received no press criticism, with one of the only vaguely critical

articles being an op-ed piece in the Daily Mail asking whether it was right for women to

‘stand by their man’. The similarities between the actions of Maxine Carr and Carole Morris

are striking, as are the differences in their treatment by the criminal justice system, the press

and the public. The fact that Maxine Carr was granted an indefinite anonymity order,

considering the crime she committed, should result in a serious consideration of the way the

press covers individuals related to crimes which engender such passionate and emotional

reactions.

The influence of Lexis/Nexis means that studies of journalism increasingly rely on

electronic databases for retrieving news texts, resulting in research where the natural

relationships which occur on the printed pages get lost. Text is examined without the

context of the headline size or font, without any knowledge of whether there was an

22

accompanying visual, or accompanying caption. By studying these texts out of situe, we

lose any sense of how newspaper readers experience the content which we study so closely.

We hope this paper encourages more examinations of press coverage of serious

crime, considering how visual montage and juxtaposition may influence readers. We hope

audience studies can be undertaken, both experimental and exploratory, to explore in more

depth how readers process newspaper pages, and whether, and to what extent messages

from visuals interact with messages from texts.

Notes

1 In 1968, eleven-year-old Mary Bell was convicted of the manslaughter of four-year-old

Martin Brown and three-year-old Brian Howe. A high court decision in 2003 provided

life-long anonymity for both Mary Bell, now 46 and for her eighteen-year-old daughter.

2 In 1993, two-year-old Jamie Bulger was abducted from a Merseyside shopping centre by

ten-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. The schoolboys were later convicted

of the toddler’s murder and sentenced to eight years in prison (later increased to ten).

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25

TABLES & FIGURES

TABLE 1

Sun Daily Mail TimesTotal Average Total Average Total Average

Carr 8799 cm2 166 cm2 5826 cm2 171 cm2 3842 cm2 226 cm2

Huntley 10947

cm2

144 cm2 5742 cm2 174 cm2 2710 cm2 180 cm2

FIGURE DESCRIPTIONS

Figure 1: (Line DIAGRAM) Huntley stands between Maxine Carr (left) and his mother

Lynda Huntley (right)

Figure 2: ‘Maxine talked about the girls in the past tense, then laughed’, The Daily Mail, 21

November 2003, p.19

Figure 3: ‘You lied and lied’, The Sun, 8 December 2003, pp.8-9

26

Figure 4: ‘I picked Jessica up, took her downstairs and went back for Holly. I put the bodies

in my car and drove’, Daily Mail ,2 December, 2003: 6-7

Figure 5: ‘No emotion, no sympathy’, Sun, 5 November, 2005: 8-9

27