Page 255 - Communication and Citizenship Journalism and the Public Sphere

244 COMMUNICATION AND CITIZENSHIP

MYTHOLOGICAL PARTNERS
As was said above, the relation between the tabloid press and television
which has been forged by the former’s stories is, perhaps, best seen as a
symbiotic one. There is mutual advantage in it. The form of the relation
is complex in that it is multi-faceted. It is in part economic and in part
also political, but not least of all, it is also cultural. It is with the cultural
dimension of the relation that what follows is mainly concerned. What
sort of cultural relations are there between the tabloid press and
television, and how do they serve their mutual interests? To answer
these questions, we must turn to the stories themselves to determine
what they might signify about television, or more precisely the various
categories of people who work within it. It should be stressed that, in
the absence of a developed understanding of the transactions and
transformations that occur in the reading of these stories, all that can be
legitimately considered here is their meaning potential. The main task
will be to describe how certain of television’s performers are made to
appear in the stories.
There were lots of stories from which to select. The main ones, those
given the fullest and most spectacular forms of coverage, tended to
feature ‘TV stars in trouble’ which most often arose from reported
sexual encounters of an illicit kind. How might we begin to understand
these stories?
Within the columns of the tabloid press, images of television are
constructed and cultivated which lift it, and those involved with it, out of
the ordinary, everyday world. The most useful way to regard these
stories is as a species of fabulous writing. Usually, we tend to think of
such writing as creating other, remote worlds that are peopled by
marvellous characters possessed of awesome powers. They are, often,
worlds which operate according to physical and social laws that are, in
several ways, different from those of our own mundane or primary
world. Something of the sort is present in the tabloid stories about
television. The world they create— let’s call it tellyland—is populated
with characters who, if not marvellous, are certainly glamorous. There
is little in the writing or illustration of the stories to suggest that these
characters do many of the things which fill up the days of ‘ordinary’
people. It is true that they are sometimes made to experience some of
the same sorts of grief or emotional crises as ordinary people, but on
such occasions the experience is of a more intense quality. The
attributes which really distinguish them as extraordinary beings are their
capacity and apparent desire for pleasure.