ABSTRACT
In recent years, television news seems to have been undergoing a crisis of confidence. Faced with declining audiences and increasing competition for ratings, the balance between ‘information’ and ‘entertainment’, always an unsteady one, has begun to shift. Thus, we have seen the emergence of ‘tabloid television’, ‘reality TV’ and audience-participation talk shows, and increasing experimentation with traditional news formats. For producers, there are significant questions here about how to engage and retain the audience, while simultaneously explaining complex events at an appropriate level. Yet these developments in the genre also pose more fundamental questions about how television addresses and constitutes the viewer as a citizen and as a potential participant in the public sphere of social and political debate.
