Page 143 - Culture Media Language Working Papers in Cultural Studies

132 MEDIA STUDIES

do those which pass into the sphere of current affairs receive attention from each
programme located there. Some issues are considered to be more appropriately
handled by particular programmes than by others. Certain issues, however, are
covered by the full range of news and current affairs programmes. At the moment
such issues include the contested policies of the Government to ‘curb inflation’
by preventing ‘excessive wage settlements’, encouraging ‘moderation in wage
negotiations’ and ‘holding down’ public expenditure. Issues such as these, which
are classified by politicians as well as broadcasters as ones that ‘affect the nation
as a whole’, are more or less guaranteed access to each of the regular current affairs
magazines—for example, Panorama, Tonight, Weekend World and Nationwide.
There are other types of issues which are not granted this universal access.
Some issues (crime, for example), while receiving extensive routine surveillance
in television news bulletins, rarely set in motion the full current affairs
apparatus. They will typically be handled by investigative documentary reports
and by some of the magazine programmes, such as Tonight, which, over a period
of time, have come to include higher proportions of ‘social problem’ issues. For
a ‘crime issue’ to receive the more intensely speculative forms of coverage
which, over a period of several years have come to be regarded as the province
of Panorama, it would have to have passed through certain additional thresholds
of definition by accredited witnesses in the primary domains of the political and
the economic. An example could be a run of particularly violent crimes which
were said to represent a whole social pattern of events, or something which was
seen to be a more general crisis in the legal apparatus as such. We cannot speak
of a universal journalistic mode of appropriation and transformation of these
primary definitions. The same content, already formed in the primary domains,
will be transformed in different ways depending upon the televisual ‘slot’ to
which they are directed.
This can be briefly illustrated by reference to the peculiarities of Nationwide.
Political issues of the type regularly featured by Panorama occupy an
exceptional and subordinate position in Nationwide’s repertoire of topics. When
such ‘heavy’ political items do appear there they are typically marked out by
some variation on the basic phrase ‘and now we turn to more serious matters’.
The following statement from the programme indicates more clearly the basis
upon which selections and placings are made: ‘Whenever we can on Nationwide
we try to bring you the brighter side of life, to counter all the gloom and
despondency around us. And tonight we have a success story….’ Similar
statements about the programme itself pepper its presenters’ narratives; they
fulfil a meta-discursive function, reminding audiences of the status of the
programme’s transformations and, simultaneously, marking their difference from
the others paradigmatically possible within the field of television journalism.
This cast to the programme’s transformations is carried through to the
handling of issues demarcated as ‘heavy’. In general terms, it leads to a quest for
the ‘ray of hope’ or the ‘good news’ amidst the ‘bad’. So prevalent is this
orientation that the mere presence of contradictory forces within the events