`No emotion,no sympathy': The visual construction of Maxine Carr

Abstract

This article examines the visual press coverage in three centre-right British newspapers of the Soham murder trial, a very high-profile case which took place in the winter of 2003. The previous summer, two young girls had been abducted and murdered, and their school caretaker, Ian Huntley was charged with their murder. He was tried alongside his girlfriend, Maxine Carr who, significantly, was not deemed to be an accomplice but was charged with perverting the course of justice, because she provided an alibi for Huntley. Public loathing towards Carr remains intense and when she was released in May 2004 she was granted indefinite anonymity. This article focuses on the visual representation of Maxine Carr, in an attempt to understand the ways in which she was visually constructed in comparison with Ian Huntley. A content analysis and qualitative visual analysis were undertaken on the trial coverage published in The Times (broadsheet), the Daily Mail (middle market) and the Sun (tabloid). The content analysis demonstrated that images of Maxine Carr appeared more frequently than images of Ian 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 that the influence of newspaper page layout and image montages is too frequently overlooked by media scholars, but that it should not be underestimated, particularly in terms of the reporting of high-profile crimes.