Page 47 - Sport Culture and the Media

28 || SPORT, CULTURE AND THE MEDIA

is to construct the idea of the ‘public interest’ within a type of ‘free market
model’, which, in the case of newspapers, positions them as:

simply in the business of satisfying the demand for news. So the principal
criterion of selection is public interest. The concept of ‘public interest’ is
usually interpreted in two ways: what the public is interested in; and what
is in the public’s interest. This produces a dual approach to the business
of editing. It means the news media have to both ‘give the public what it
wants’, which is often taken to be ‘human interest’ or largely trivial
material, and to fulfil its ‘duty’ to record the important events of the day.
(Windschuttle 1984: 262)

Because the public interest can be invoked easily but never understood abso-
lutely, and because terms like ‘trivial’ or ‘human interest’ can be endlessly
debated, newspaper proprietors and editors (and their equivalents in television
and radio) can claim that they are only biased against what is boring and
off-putting for their publics. If they do not cover news stories about their com-
mercial or political opponents, or represent them unfavourably if they do, it can
be claimed by media organizations that it is in response to an audience-pleasing
imperative. Here the rather abstract concept of the public interest can be easily
translated into measurements (ratings, circulation, sales) of what the public can
be shown to be interested in.
This second function of the mass media, then, has rather less lofty ambitions
and a somewhat reduced emphasis on ethical accountability; it is to entertain
the populace using the new media technologies (which allow texts to be rapidly
reproduced and disseminated) to communicate cheaply with large numbers of
people. In this way, it is no longer necessary to go to a concert to hear music
or to watch a play in performance to experience drama. Furthermore, the popu-
larity of this media content can be used to advertise the myriad goods whose
mass production demands an equivalent level of mass consumption (Dyer
1982). As Brierley puts it with disarming directness:
Advertising arose out of the industrial revolution. Overproduction of mass
market goods through new manufacturing techniques and low consump-
tion meant that consumer goods companies needed to stimulate demand.
New channels of distribution such as transportation and mass retailing
opened up the possibility of reaching new markets.
(Brierley 1998: 39)
To be effective, advertising had to connect with the powerful social myths
already in circulation (Leiss et al. 1990) and also be situated in a highly visible
media site where it was available to facilitate the trade in goods and services.
Popular media texts could, then, be used as a lure to bring unknowing and