United States’ president Barack Obama had his health care plan upheld by the US Supreme Court this week, and that made headlines in yesterday’s front pages all over the country.
The Iowa City Press-Citizen showed a lifeline image along with the headline “What’s Next?”, a symbol for tension and anxiety, emphasizing the feeling of uneasiness and doubt.
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The Home News Tribune focused on the partisanship of the issue, without any subtetly.
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A more subtle way to show it is through the images of Obama’s supporters and/or opponents. Some newspapers, like The Dallas Morning News, illustrated their front page with joyful Obama supporters, therefore putting a positive spin on the report; while others, like the Los Angeles Times chose to show Tea Party supporters in tears, with a more “bad news” approach.
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The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post used images of both groups. While The WSJ focused on the opposite reactions, showing separate pictures of both Obama’s suppoerters’ celebrations and Tea Party’s tears; the Post focused on the animosity between them, with a photograph of an argument in progress.
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Other newspapers used images of patients, shifting the focus from politics’ victory / loss to the possible effects of the bill in people’s lives. The Seattle Times showed a picture of a young child receiving a shot from his mother — an image that evokes the emotional and protective side of readers — with the possible reading “this bill will save this poor innocent child’s life”
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The San Francisco Chronicle depicted a middle-aged man in a medical office. The man has latin-american facial features, placing emphasis in the large hispanic population in the area, relating it to the consequences of the bill.
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In Alabama, a state where over 30% of the population is obese, The Decatur Daily showed a young female patient and a doctor in a doctor’s office, both clearly overweight. The image subtlety draws attention to the obesity epidemic that affects that country, and that has a massive impact on healthcare costs.
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The New York Post, as usual, has no love for subtlety. ;)
