Daya Kishan Thussu, News As Entertainment. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi And Singapore: Sage, 2007. ￡65.00. 214 Pp

摘要

spectacle, trivia. Infotainment, in short. This neologism of the 1980s may seem to give greater weight to information because of the stress on the first syllable, but it is entertainment that is dominant. For Daya Thussu, the result is a false global, 'feel good' style, broadcast journalism determined by neoliberal market values. The public service ethos of television is everywhere under threat. As television remains the dominant worldwide medium, the shaping power of TV news remains powerful, and does so primarily in Hollywood- and Bollywood-based news cultures. Thussu begins by showing how this situation has developed historically, its political, economic and technological contexts, and its globalized scope, with the US model of market-led broadcast journalism spreading across the world in both news and current affairs coverage. He then turns to examine the impact of infotainment on TV news in India, which has 40 dedicated 24/7 television news networks and is now the world's largest television news market, before moving on to the representation of war as a form of macabre infotainment.