ABSTRACT
The term ‘celebrity news’ effectively masks the fact that some of the practices used to produce celebrity news are very different to those used to produce what is more conventionally described as news. However, unlike the news that is sought out by the traditional news journalist, unsolicited celebrity news is provided to journalists via press release, press packs, access to events, through personal contact with the publicity and promotions organizations generating interest in new commercial vehicles (films and television productions, for instance), or through the publicity arm of the celebrity’s own management team. A factor which distinguishes celebrity news from more traditional news is its attenuated relationship with fact. The establishment of a discursive regime around the presentation of celebrity news reflects the media’s progressive, if implicit, tolerance for a redefinition of what it might regard as news. Celebrity journalism is far from the first to treat news as a means of entertaining its audience.
