Paper Monitor
11:46 UK time, Tuesday, 15 March 2011
A series highlighting the riches of the daily press.
It's official. Well, in Monitor Towers anyway. Travellers are the new Katie Price, the new Diana, even the new Posh and Becks - they are the new obsession of certain newspapers.
Following the success of Channel 4's Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, the travelling community has found itself firmly in the sights of the tabloids, along with some of the other papers.
At the Daily Star they have repeatedly knocked Katie Price off the front page, a minor miracle considering she has a new, very handsome, 25-year-old Argentinian boyfriend.
The Sun is also fascinated and today has a double-page spread on , which is in Crays Hill, near Basildon, Essex. The council has decided that after 10 years the families at Dale Farm must finally go and has given them 28 days to pack up and leave. The eviction could cost £28m apparently.
Dale Farm featured in the Channel 4 programme and, referencing the show, the paper has gone with the headline: "Our big fat gypsy eviction". It leaves Paper Monitor wondering why everything in the traveller community is always described as big and fat?
Anyway, as with any obsession, there seems to be a bit of a fight over who knows the most about the subject, and is closest to the action. The Sun says it is the only paper to be granted access to the site, although the Daily Mail also has a double-page spread on the site today and also seems to have gained access.
There's some emotive language used in both. The Daily Mail writes of "native villagers" moving their children to different schools, while the Sun's reporter recounts a meeting with a young traveller who said she has dreamt about the police tearing down her home. "I was screaming, I'm scared," she said.
The Sun can claim the best picture, a very interesting shrine on the site involving a large statue of the Virgin Mary and a bathtub. It has also managed to find a local person who says the travellers should be allowed to stay. She's a rarity if both articles are an accurate reflection of the situation.
But will they be evicted? Who knows, we will have to wait and see. But one thing is for sure, the national newspapers are going to devote many more column inches to the saga because big, fat gypsy stories seem to attract big, fat numbers of readers.
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