Fires, floods, accidents, celebrity lifestyles, heroic acts of humble people, cute acts by family pets and the weather. Television's non-news about non-events takes up an increasingly large part of contemporary broadcast journalism, but is regularly dismissed by television pundits as having no place on our screens. To its critics, this 'other news' distracts our attention with trivialities and entertainment values, and undermines journalism's relationship with the workings of democracy. Yet, in spite of these protests, this 'lite news' remains as entrenched and as popular as ever. InTabloid Television, John Langer argues that television's 'other news' must be recognised as equally important as 'hard news' in the building of a genuinely comprehensive study of broadcast journalism. Using narrative analysis, theories of ideology, concepts from genre studies and detailed textual readings, 'other news' is explored as a cultural discourse connected with 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 an allegedly non-political news and explores the links between this type of news and recent broadcasting trends towards 'reality television'. Tabloid Television, Popular Journalism and the 'Other News' provides an eclectic and intriguing look at one of the most maligned areas of television news. By offering an extended and thoroughly grounded analysis of actual news stories, John Langer locates the question of representational power as one of the central concerns of the media studies agenda and offers some interesting speculation about where television news may be heading.

Fires, floods, celebrity lifestyles, heroic acts of humble people, and cute acts by family pets. Sensational news seems to take up an increasingly large part of contemporary broadcast journalism, but it is regularly dismissed as having no place on our screens. In Tabloid Television, John Langer argues that television's "other news" must be recognized as equally important as "hard news" in the building of a comprehensive study of broadcast journalism. Using narrative analysis, theories of ideology, concepts from genre studies and detailed textual readings, "other news" is explored as a cultural discourse connected with story- telling, gossip, social memory, the horror film, national identity and the cult of fame. An eclectic and intriguing look at one of the most maligned areas of television news, Tabloid Television offers some interesting speculation about where the news might be heading.

An examination of the rise of tabloid television and the political, cultural, and technological changes that have enabled its success.

Coverage of the Clinton-Lewinsky saga followed in a long trail of media exposures of the more personal details of the lives of public figures. Many commentators have seen stories like this, and TV shows like Jerry Springer's, as evidence of a decline in the standards of the mass media. This increasing interest in private lives and the falling off of coverage of serious news is often described as Otabloidization.O The essays in this book are the first serious scholarly studies of what is going on and what its implications are. Reality, it turns out, is much more complex than some of the laments suggest. As the contributors show, this is not just a U.S. problem but is repeated in country after country, and it is not certain that the media anywhere are getting more tabloid. What is more, there is no consensus about whether tabloidization is just Odumbing downO or whether it is a necessary tactic for the mass media to engage with new audiences who do not have the news habit. Tabloid Tales will be of interest to students and scholars in journalism, mass communication, political science, and cultural and media studies.

"Nesbitt-Larking challenges his readers to become critical consumers of media and provides a number of strategies to encourage them to do so." - Nick Baxter-Moore, Brock University

The first managing editor of Fox Television's "A Current Affair" tells the story of television's wild decade--an inside look at the decisions, mistakes, crimes, and competition that made the tabloid TV genre a national phenomena, and the tawdry mix of scandal and sleaze that destroyed it.