Interesting to see how much discussion this has provoked...It's a complex scenario and not helped by any hasty simplification. If I had more time, I would certainly be posting. And I most certainly would be pointing you in all in the direction of some interesting stuff to read - stuff that you will never find in the Daily Mail, which seems to be extensively referenced here! A shame, given it is inflammatory, often inaccurate, hysterical, misinformed, underresearched, and seems intent on inciting xenophobia and intolerance.

The Daily Wail has always been that way.

British Newspapers have very clear target audiences:

Mail was always a tory rag, wouldnt expect nothing else.

Decipline

Not a fan of the Daily Mail then Shasha? Are you suggesting that our ever alert and vigilant press, the upholders of everything that is good about Britain might actually be sleazy lieing scum bags? I'm shocked and surprised;Not.

Tory rag! are the others any better.

The pictures in the Mail don't lie.

In what way?

But--- they make a selection of pictures that will help to produce/or enhance the reactions that Shasha describes. As with all newspapers they target a specific audience.

Now there is a naive statement if I ever saw one.

Not just selection as Bipat says, but decisions on location, composition, cropping, editing, depth of field choice, choices of juxtaposition, layout, even decisions on exposure can change the meaning and what an image in a publication communicates.

Not to mention photoshopping.

Bipat/Lion That may be true, but you see the same pictures of the same rioters on TV and in all the nationals.
kimilseung I suggest you put some Urls on so that I can be educated to your standards.

I never suggested that the judges should hand down sentences that exceed those laid down in the rules but quite often they are too soft on criminals. Public opinion should be taken into account when the rules are written. That does not mean that mob rule would happen in fact it was mob rule (riots) that started this thread.
And why should the victims views not be taken into account, the person charged with a crime gets a defence council, quite often paid for by our (the general public's) taxes, to represent them.
Unequal sentencing is nothing new, it happens all the time with all sorts of crime because judges are allowed discretion.
As for suggesting that judges would break the rules which bar them from taking a case in which they have any personal relationship with the defendant, that is insulting to our judges.

I do not have any to hand but I'll do a quick google,
A place to start might be The Glasgow Media Group.
The Guardian points of view skinhead advert is something you may remember that illustrates how an image can mis-communicate.
One notable example is the Retuers Beruit bombing photo, and this only came to light after publication because the photoshopping was so bloody bad. The question to ask is about the good quality ones that remain unknown.
Another is the staged landings on Somali beaches.
Stalins famous removal of denounced party members.
http://www.fourandsix.com/photo-tampering-history/

The big problem is not knowing, when we see a photo, we do not know the oppurtunity cost of that photo. We can not see beyond the frame.
Consider how many talking heads of middle class origin are positioned in front of bookcases and sat at desks, this is not an accident, it is chosen, to suggest that the person is learned and to be trusted. Then ask yourself about photos of working class people that you may see in the Daily Mail for example, in social scrounger stories, and ask what are they juxtapsed with? Do none of them read? Often they will be photographed with tacky wallpaper in the background (or in the garden with a mess in the background), this again is done with consideration, to get middle class snobs to dislike them before they even read the story.

“competence in reading visual imagery is an acquired skill similar to the process
of learning language, a social activity defined by the norms of a particular
culture.”

George Legrady, “Image, Language, and Belief in Synthesis,” Art Journal 116 (1990)

Traditional photographs - the ones our culture has always put so
much trust in - have never been “true” in the first place.
Photographers intervene in every photograph they make, whether
by orchestrating or directly interfering in the scene being imaged;
by selecting, cropping, excluding, and in other ways making
pictorial choices as they take the photograph; by enhancing,
suppressing, and cropping the finished print in the darkroom; and,
finally, by adding captions and other contextual elements to their
image to anchor some potential meanings and discourage others.

Geoffrey Batchen, “Phantasm: Digital Imaging and the Death of Photography,”

The meaning of a photographic image is built up by an interaction
of such schemas or codes, which vary greatly in their degree of
schematisation. The image is therefore to be seen as a composite
of signs, more to be compared with a complex sentence than a
single word. Its meanings are multiple, concrete, and, most
important, constructed.

John Tagg, The Burden of Representation

on the one hand, a press photograph is an object worked up,
selected, composed, constructed, treated according to various
professional, aesthetic, or ideological norms which are so many
connotation-factors; and, on the other hand, this same photograph
is not only perceived, received, it is read, attached – more or less
consciously by the public which consumes it – to a traditional stock
of signs

Roland Barthes, “The Photographic Message,”

Green Helmet Guy at Qana

http://www.slublog.com/archives/2006...assion_of.html

This killing was real, but the execution was moved outside to facilitate journalists

http://www.petapixel.com/2010/07/05/...t-cover-photo/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...oom-photo.html

http://themoderatevoice.com/46605/ph...torial-fakery/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...ph-7-7-bombers

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomac...tilla-1.294780

http://bigjournalism.com/oceren/2010...tions-instead/

I'm done with Google for now.