The Wedding of James Packer and Erica Baxter

Two daily newspapers, “The Sydney Morning Herald” and “The Daily Telegraph,” published on Friday, 22 June, 2007, reported the wedding of James Packer who is one of the Australia’s richest men and his new bride Erica Baxter, an Australian singer and model.

According to both the newspapers, they married two days ago, on Wednesday, 20 June, 2007 in Cap d’Antibes, France with guests approximately from one hundred and fifty to two hundred. There were many influential people, such as famous Hollywood actor Tom Cruise and his wife, Katie Holmes, actress, Wendi Deng who is the wife of Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive officer of News Corporation, Eddie McGuire, Channel Nine personality and PBL boss John Alexander on the list of guests.

In addition, uninvited guests like paparazzi watched their wedding from a distance. Both articles wrote about the wedding dress of the bride, which was worth one hundred thousand Australian dollars haute couture gown and created by John Galliano of the Paris fashion house Christian Dior. This dress was produced after six-hundred to seven-hundred hours of handwork. However, Baxter ordered two dresses, one to wear at the public wedding ceremony and the second marriage ceremony.

Two articles of both newspapers were similar and different in their methods of expression, news values and key themes. Firstly, methods of expression completely differed. The Sydney Morning Herald wrote “Here comes the Packer bride and the paparazzi” in the headline and inserted photographs showing James Packer’s vow and Erica Baxter wearing a dress and escorted by her father, Michael Baxter, whereas The Daily Telegraph wrote “Packer’s style switch from low-key to lavish” and inserted photographs showing Packer’s vow but different angle and guests taken under helicopter.

Secondly, news values of two articles also differed. The Sydney Morning Herald reported a summary of this wedding in order to deliver general information. As a result, this was written by moderate words. However, The Daily Telegraph focused on the bride’s wedding dress and used sarcastic words, such as ‘lavish’ and ‘splurge’, because it is able to give a feeling of satisfaction to their readers who want to know defects of powerful people. Finally, these key themes were similar. Both articles used the same key words, a wedding and a dress worth one hundred thousand Australian dollars.