ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide some assumptions that have been made in debates about popular culture and the way it interfaces with political affairs. It explores questions via a consideration of the relationship between the 'popular' or tabloid press and television. The chapter analyses some of the assumptions that are typically made about the tabloid press. Much concern has of late been expressed about the quality of information on 'serious public affairs' available from the media. Equally few could be seen as serving an insider public with the information they needed to have an informed view of private matters as the evolving editorial policies of television or the ways in which the exploitation of different delivery systems might transform the structures of visual broadcasting. The main task will be to describe how certain of television's performers are made to appear in the stories.
