A SENSE of unreality surrounds the debate about media coverage of the lives of famous people which has been provoked by called Rocca case. On one side are the media "traditionalists", who believe the media should report such matters only to the extent that they affect the public interest. On the other are the "realists", arguing that media must report whatever the public shows an interest in.
At the heart of the debate lies the assumption that what is finally at issue is, at most, some delicate refinement of, or minor slippage from, the present set of standards; that at the end of the discussion some balance will prevail. As usual, our debate operates on the assumption that we have almost got things to their final, ideal state.
A tuck here, a tweak there, and everything will continue like that for the remainder of time. Of course, what will prevail in the future will make the present debate seem like the 1950s discussion about whether it was becoming for ladies to wear slacks.
Both realists and traditionalists begin from the premise that what the media are seeking, in their different ways, is a way of reporting reality "better" than before. One side argues for what it calls freedom, the other for what it calls restraint. One side argues that stories involving famous people are useful conduits for bringing important issues - violence against women, the reality of the glitterati - into the public domain, the other that this results in the trivialisation of such issues and the exploitation of those involved.
Both believe their arguments to be based on virtue - one side the virtue of traditional like respect and seriousness, the other the virtue the marketplace, of giving people "what they, want".
But what virtue of any kind has to do with this is unclear. There is no reason to expect our media to improve in any way at all. All media are changing, and none for the better. Survival of all media will in the future depend on a willingness either to jettison any remaining traditionalist reservations or cover their embarrassment with a convenient rationalisation.
The realists accuse the traditionalists of wanting to serve an elitist model of media, to present only the activities of the official sectors of society. It is good, they say, that the media now cover the real life activities of "real" people and the issues affecting them.
IT IS TIME to get real. Sit down in front of your television set on any afternoon and watch one of those American talk shows purporting to portray the lives of real people. As you sit watching Oprah Winfrey or Ricki Lake, the very last thing on your mind will be that what you are watching is reality.
On these programmes you will see people engage with one another about the most intimate aspects of their lives. Nothing is taboo. Family members will come on and accuse one another. People will scream and shout, as though they were sitting at home in their front rooms. In a sense, they are. It is not elitist to observe that these are people who have known no other reality except the reality of television.
Conceived during commercial breaks, and raised in rooms with the television always on, they have grown into a world in which the only reality is the reality of television. And they wish, above all else, to be part of that world, if only for a brief and fleeting moment. They do not see the television set in the corner as a window on to some external world. For them it is the world. Its tube is their lifeline, its screen their mirror.
It is clear, watching them, that they have never before been quite so alive. What you are watching is the future of communications media, a future which will finally transcend the notion of observing, commenting or reporting on a life that might be called real, to create a new reality even "realer" than the real thing.
All media now follow the footprints of television. The conventional view of media does not allow this to be understood - print media are reluctant to admit how this process affects them, and television has a vested interest in colluding with the disingenuousness that conceals its own true nature.
The official notion of television derives from the world of Harry Enfield's Mr Chomondley Warner and his "short, informal but informative" broadcasts, an archaic mode of commentary on a world believed to be relatively fixed and understood. If you read the TV review columns in most newspapers, you will see that they derive from the view that television should be judged according to the accuracy of its depiction of the "real" world.
What is reviewed is not television but the things that happen on television, the implication being that television is some kind of extension of the real world. In fact, television is a different world, largely independent of the one we think of as real.
GIVEN MARKET dynamics, and the profit imperative, the drift of television will inevitably infect other media as well. So called "tabloidisation" is simply the process of turning the real world into the stuff of TV fantasy. Increasingly, the effect is to draw all media away from the role of observing and into that of participating, and satiation, enabling the world of celebrity fantasy to supplant the real world in the lives of the audience. It is now nonsensical to talk about any other "reality" that the media might more properly represent.
Fantasies, of course, require characters, which media create to enact the storylines that are their bread and butter. The modern society requires a constant supply of celebrities to act out those elements of the human drama which are, by and large, beyond the scope of the everyday. We gather in front of the glass cage to observe the products of our human cravings made manifest. We catch a glimpse of what we ourselves might have been, and gaze until, in a state of envy, relief or self satisfaction, we drop off to sleep.
For the moment, we will continue to behave as though what is happening is, on the one hand, simply some temporary decline from standards or good taste, or on the other a welcome opening up of the channels of communication. In the end, all of us will have to decide whether we want to live in the real world of celebrity fantasy, or die of loneliness. Media will participate in the emerging culture to the extent that they wish to survive. In the future we will look back and chuckle at the restraint of the present day.
What do I think of all this? I think that this is the way it is, and all I know for certain is that it will get worse and worse and will never stop. I sympathise with colleagues who feel they must explain the changing nature of their work by reference to the welcome death of elitism, or the opening up of the channels of communication to issues of genuine human interest.
I sympathise, too, with those who wring their hands at the decline in standards. All this, though irrelevant, is understandable. Whatever gets you through the night, is all right, is all right. The darkness is only beginning to descend.