This has changed the way in which journalists work, the way stories are covered, and the way they evolve.
Those who believe a plural media is central to the functioning of democ- racy maintain that issues of integrity rather than commercial imperatives should provide the foundations for any journalistic professional code of practice, while the unfettered pursuit of profit in the cultural industries is
‘unlikely to produce the opportunities for knowledge and understanding that an informed, effective, participatory democracy requires’ (Barnett 1998, p. 89). This seems a vain hope given the importance placed on corporate revenues.
THE ROLE OF CELEBRITY IN SOCIETY: ‘ALL IS
The attentive public forms a vital third element in a triple pillared world of media and entertainment. Audiences are ambivalent towards these ‘pop- ularly elected gods and goddesses’ (Gamson et al. 1992, p. 265). Envy drives adoration in a tainted fantasy world where the audience longs for the adventurous and incredible lives of the celebrities, desires the fame and fortune which accompany it, and is fed by an endless pageant of novelty, excitement and gossip. And yet, the same audience reveals an almost per- verse enjoyment of the fallibility of these idols. They celebrate the fall from grace revealing that:
Even though these celebrities enjoy near limitless wealth, worldwide fame, and command indulgence on a scale that would make such as Cleopatra and Josephine De Beauharnais blush, they are just as subject to human frailties as the rest of us. (Foulkes 2001, p. XXVI)
A clear link emerges between the growth of the publicity apparatus and the birth of modern American consumer culture, and its roots in the newly- expanding urban markets and the leisure business boom, with show busi- ness, the film industry, and the star system at its heart (Gamson 1999, p. 262).
The changing editorial culture means that there is a profusion of news and entertainment media available to disseminate these celebrity images.
Television has developed a pervasive influence as ‘our existential emptiness sends us on a desperate quest to bring meaning to our lives . . . (that) drives us to conspicuous consumerism’ (Dixon 1999, pp. 35–6). As a result, tele- vision has emerged as the most significant new outlet for image creation, as
‘areas traditionally perceived as non-entertainment (news in particular), come to depend on the practices of the entertainment industry, and celebrity in particular’ (Gamson 1999, p. 271).
As we have already seen, in the desperate search for profit, spectacle has replaced substance:
[Information is] tightly controlled, channeled, and manipulated by a few giant conglomerates; what we receive at the end of the ‘news filter’ is a pre-censored, pre-digested chaff. . . titillation and gossip, lacking both the style and substance of empirical factual reportage. (Dixon 1999, p. 3)
Thus the rise of infotainment in the media serves to further reinforce a cult of personality in the industry. The images mean huge sales for televi- sion, as well as for the more traditional outlets of magazines and
‘fanzines’. Television’s selective nature plays to the trend, and the increas- ing dominance of technology and the trend towards the commodifi -
cation of news due to corporate control of news organizations and con- vergence within the industry has meant the production of its own star system.
The costs and logistical demands of the technology of collection and dis- semination, the demands of ever-more hungry news rooms, as well as cos- metic contrivances such as ‘stand-ups’, themselves seeking to reinforce the fact that ‘we are there’, encourage the trend of reporters as celebrities (MacGregor 1997, pp. 186–7). Along with the increasingly celebrated faces that front the news reports, these media stars have become the fodder of marketing departments, promoting particular channels and media products.
In the celebrity culture, where the borders between politics and enter- tainment dissolve, and the celebritization of politics poses complex and important questions regarding image and reality. Political leaders are, themselves, little more than celebrity endorsements for powerful elite groups and party political machinery. Public relations, media agencies and opinion polling, which themselves developed as part of the enter- tainment industry, now ‘provide models and mediating discourses for the organisation of contemporary political culture, in which the political leader attempts to embody the mass public affectively’ (Marshall 1997, p. 240).
The role of the media, and television in particular, is key in allowing politicians to create an intimacy with their public, a careful construction of political characters, avoiding the articulation of ideology or political posi- tion, so as not to alienate any elements of the electorate. ‘Television news provides the material for establishing a narrative of politics. Political leaders in this reconstruction, become leading characters in a continuously unfolding drama’ (Marshall 1997, p. 229). Political leaders are often juxta- posed with television personalities, particularly news anchors. These anchors are already familiar faces to viewers, guiding them through life’s daily confusion of information and events, inserted into the ‘construction of significant moments’, showing control, interpreting events, and provid- ing security in a chaotic world (ibid., 1997, p. 124).
It is no surprise, then, when these personalities slip easily across the already frail frontier between entertainment and politics as we shall see they do in the Philippines. The combination of the generally enthusiastic embrace of consumer culture by the citizens of most of Southeast Asia, and where there is broad participation in the political system, has meant that competing elites use media celebrities to secure public support.
Democracy is increasingly driven by celebrity culture and becomes its tool as the ‘celebrification process, pervades politics as well as star-making through image manipulation’ (Rojek 2001, pp. 184–6).