Tabloid Television: Popular Journalism and the ‘Other News

Fires, floods, family pets, celebrity life styles, heroic acts by ordinary people: non-news about non-events is a growing part of contemporary television, popular and increasingly entrenched. Critics of other’ news however, say it distracts our attention with trivialities and undermines the democratic process. John Langer argues that this other’ news is as important as hard’ news in any genuinely comprehensive study of broadcast journalism. Lite news’ is examined through the cultural discourses of story telling, gossip, social memory, the horror film, national identity and the cult of fame. Langer’s study also examines the political role played by this allegedly non-political news form, and explores the links between the ‘other news’ and recent broadcasting trends towards ‘reality television’. A compelling study of a neglected area, Tabloid Television locates the question of representational power as a central concern of media studies.