In this essay I discuss the transformation of television
journalism into popular culture, and the ideological effect of this
transformation. The analysis is based on the systematic observation
of Slovene television news (on TV Slovenia and POP TV), carried
out for several weeks in 1998. A few years ago, the televised “daily
news” in this country was still clearly distinct from other television
genres in terms of iconography, rhetoric and ideology, as well as
in the selection of personalities that featured in it. Today, the
news and newspresenters are undeniably part of the local showbiz
scene. The news as the dissemination and presentation of information
has been replaced by the model of the news as styled entertainment
and social event. News about politics and famous personalities at
important occasions are increasingly becoming stories about chaos
in society, and from the communicative point of view they have been
modified into an amalgam of common-sense chat, sociability, fatalistic
melodrama, visual spectacle, simulation of technological sophistication,
super-professionalism, rhetorical simulation of dramatic conflict,
and… information. But the central factor in the transformation of
the news from a particular, realistic political discourse into a
segment of local popular culture lies in the changed role of the
newsreader. The newsreader has turned into a newspresenter and a
trademark of the television institution. On commercial television
he/she is deliberately constructed as a public figure, an honest
person, a professional who can be trusted as a source of credibility,
truthfulness and authenticity for the news. He/she has changed into
a narrator of stories, constantly in search of the truth for the
benefit of the audience. His/her telegenic image determines the
veracity of the news. What is the political effect of this “chatty
discourse”? The results can be summarised in the following statements:
- Providing information is secondary to an audience of entertainment
news. The whole iconographical image of the news, the visual
style, the para-social relationship of the newspresenter with
the imaginary audience, and common-sense rhetorical figures
define the occasion as a social occasion. There is nothing
more dramatic, exciting and entertaining than human dramas
in the news.
- The logic of argument as a mode of substantiation is rarely
seen in the logic of individual news items. A problem, or event,
is narrated in the manner of a moral dilemma. The main task of
the news is to offer a moral judgement of the world. Who is the
good guy, who is the bad guy, who has won? Such news fatalistically
moralises about the world, rather than morally thematises it
- just like other melodramatic genres.
- Events are narrated within the referential field of personal
experience and common sense. The common sense is ideological,
of course, but it is instituted as natural. It is founded on
the presumption of fundamental, undeniable, universal truths.
- The circulation of the newspresenter in other media constructs
him/her as a personality, who can be believed and trusted, and
who can interpret the world on our behalf. Our confidence in
the credibility of the news draws upon his/her charisma and honesty
rather than the credibility of the argument.
- Entertainment news substitutes the consideration of politics
with the consideration of society. News about political corruption
is also narrated as a human story about “the world of licentious
and spoiled politics”.
- This does not mean, however, that realistic “informative news”
is less ideological. There is no reason whatsoever why news about
society (family violence, social life of the local elite, unimportant
people in exceptional situations, and so forth) as such should
be politically less relevant and more trivial than news about
the superior echelons of state and party politics. The private,
of course, is political. In fact, these two spheres are only
divided by a series of evaluations and representations, which
form the basis for the production of the specific version of
an event.
- All of the above applies to both the television institutions
studied, except that the news programme on the public service
television station occasionally does everything stated above,
but at the same time freely change its communicative dynamics
from informative journalism to tabloid journalism, together with
the changing of newspresenters - which points to the unclear
idea about what kind of pattern the news should use as a model.
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