The Sun Article - Puns

Pun in The Sun

The Sun is a daily tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and owned by News Corporation, furthermore the Sun was first published as a broadsheet in 1964 and this was before Rupert Murdoch took over. So now that we all know about the Sun, the aspect that I’ve chosen is going to be about the Sun’s frequent and somewhat endearing use of puns that we all slightly hate ourselves for laughing at and even loving.

Now typically people tend to look down on puns because they might be seen as cheap wit and often frowned upon, especially when it comes to its use in a newspaper. That being said, we have all now come to expect the Sun to use these puns for any occasion, such as just for fun or to simply embarrass. An example of them embarrassing people would be the headline “Moron Terror” in reference to the 27/1 attempted bombings in London, four people were found guilty of planning the attacks and the Sun primarily focused on the idiocy and incompetence of the operation. When it comes to things such as headlines, that we all know the sun are pretty much famous for, they really hit it off big with the headline during the Falklands War – “Gotcha.” This refers to the famous sinking of the Belgrano warship; it was celebrated on the front page of the Sun in a somewhat mocking manner.

A more recent case of a typical headline delivered by the sun would be the story of Freddie Starr, who has been in the TV show “I’m a Celebrity, Get me out of here!” was made to eat the toes of a Camel. Needless to say the Sun jumped on the chance to recreate a headline and emblazoned in bold on their front page “Freddie Starr Ate My Camel” along with this, they decided that it wasn’t enough to just have such a headline, they clearly had to throw in pun now and then, I mean why not? As Freddie ended up having to be taken to hospital they thought it fitting to state “it was toe much to handle”. The significance of this witty headline is that it is pretty much a rebirth of a very old headline from the Sun about Freddie Starr, the famous case of Freddie Starr allegedly eating a hamster; the Sun used this as their headline - “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster”.

The Sun has constantly been using these huge and over the top headlines to draw people in, this is a reflection on their target audience - the working class male. They would assume that the working class male would be interested in showbiz news and so on making the headlines and use of puns really appeal to their readers.