Taking the 1992 RTÉ Tuesday File documentary Are You Sitting Comfortably? as a case study, an ethnographic approach is used to examine the codes and conventions of Irish current affairs television. Against a background of the production pressures which surrounded the making of the documentary, the organisational context in which Are You Sitting Comfortably? was produced is considered, the perceptions those involved in the making of current affairs television have of audience interest in social problems are explored, and the manner the programme symbolises poverty and social exclusion is outlined. I conclude that Are You Sitting Comfortably? does not fit neatly into Kelly's (1984) model of Irish current affairs television, in that it is not made from a middle-ground perspective, does not use a regular presenter and sets out to emphasise the deep divisions in the Ireland of the early 1990s.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AltheideD.L.1984. ‘Media Hegemony: A Failure of Perspective’, Public Opinion Quarterly48: pp.476–490.
2.
BeharrellP.1976. Bad NewsVol. 1. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
3.
BurnsT.1977. The BBC: Public Institution and Private World. London: Macmillan.
4.
CantorM.1971. The Hollywood Television Producer: His Work and His Audience. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books.
5.
DavisE.E.GrubeJ.W.MorganM., 1984. Attitudes Towards Poverty and Related Social Issues in Ireland. Dublin: ESRI (Paper No. 117).
6.
DawsonK.1992. ‘Today Tonight, No Tomorrow’, The Sunday Tribune, 5 April.
7.
DevereuxE.1994. ‘Devils and Angels: The Rise of Irish Charity Television’, The Irish Communications Review, 4: pp.60–67.
8.
DevereuxE.1996. ‘Good Causes, God's Poor and Telethon Television’, Media Culture and Society18, 1: pp.47–68.
9.
EldrigeJ. (ed.). 1993. Getting The Message. London: Routledge.
10.
ElliotP.1972. The Making of a Television Series. London: Constable.
11.
FennellD.1986. Nice People and Rednecks. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
12.
FishmanM.1980. Manufacturing The News. Austin: University of Texas Press.
13.
FoleyM.1994. ‘Departure of O'Leary Shows RTÉ Unease’, The Irish Times, 13 July.
14.
GansH.1979. Deciding What's News. New York: Vintage.
15.
GitlinT.1980. The Whole World is Watching. Berkeley: University of California Press.
16.
GitlinT.1983. Inside Prime Time. New York: Pantheon Books.
17.
Glasgow University Media Group. 1976. Bad News. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
18.
Glasgow University Media Group. 1982. Really Bad News, London: Writers and Readers Co-operative.
19.
GoldingP.MiddletonS., 1982. Images of Welfare: Press and Public Attitudes to Poverty. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
20.
GoldingP.ElliotP., 1979. Making the News. London: Longmans.
21.
HallS.1974. ‘The Television Discourse: Encoding and Decoding’Education and Culture25: pp.8–14.
22.
HallS.ConellI.CurtiL., 1976. ‘The Unity of Current Affairs Television’ in Working Papers in Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.
23.
HartA.1988. Making The Real World: A Study of a Television Series. London: Cambridge University Press.
24.
HarveyB.1983. ‘Simon and The Media’, Simon Community Newsletter, No. 82.
25.
Informal Survey of Attitudes to RTÉ and Current Affairs Programming. 1993. (RTÉ internal document).
26.
JacksonJ.1992. ‘The Correspondent’, Hot Press16, 2 (December).
27.
JanowitzM.1952. The Community Press in an Urban Setting. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
28.
KellyM.1984. ‘Twenty Years of Current Affairs on RTÉ’ in McLooneM.MacMahonJ. (eds.), Television and Irish Society. Dublin: RTÉ/Irish Film Institute.
29.
KerrC.1994a. ‘Scrap Prime Time Say Senior RTÉ Personnel’, The Sunday Tribune, 6 June.
30.
KerrC.1994b. ‘Little Work for Independents at RTÉ’, The Sunday Tribune, 6 March.
31.
KumarK.1975. ‘Holding The Middle Ground: The BBC, the Public and the Professional Communicator’, in CurranJ.GurevitchM.WoolacottJ. (eds.), Mass Communication and Society. London: Edward Arnold in association with the Open University.
32.
LangerJ.1982. ‘Television's “Personality System”’, Media, Culture and Society4: pp.351–65.
33.
LesterM.1975. News as a Practical Accomplishment. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. University of California at Santa Barbara.
34.
Mac GréilM.1977. Prejudice and Tolerance in Ireland. Dublin: College of Industrial Relations.
35.
McVerryP.1994. ‘The Summerhill Option’ in O'DeaP. (ed.), A Class of Our Own: Conversations about Class in Ireland. Dublin: New Island Books.
36.
MonacoJ, 1978. Celebrity: The Media as Image Makers. New York: Delta Books.
37.
NewcombH.1991. ‘The Creation of Television Drama’ in Bruhn JensenK.JankowskiN.W. (eds.), A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research. London: Routledge.
38.
O'NeillB.1993. ‘Producing The Arts Show: An Ethnographic Study of Radio Producers at Work’, The Irish Communications Review3: pp.65–72.
39.
RafteryM.1991. ‘The Irish Family - The Gallaghers and Ireland’ in BolgerD. (ed.), Letters From The New Island. Dublin: Raven Arts Press.
40.
RosenthalA.1971. The New Documentary in Action. Berkeley: University of California Press.
41.
SchlesingerP.1978. Putting ‘Reality’ Together, BBC News. London: Constable.
42.
SilverstoneR.1985. Framing Science. London: British Film Institute.
43.
TesterK.1994. Media, Culture and Morality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
44.
TuchmanG.1978. Making News. New York: The Free Press.
45.
TuchmanG.1991. ‘Qualitative Methods in The Study of News’ in Bruhn JensenK.JankowskiN.W. (eds.), A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies For Mass Communication Research. London: Routledge.
46.
WhiteD.M.1950. ‘The Gatekeeper: A Case-Study in the Selection of News’, Journalism Quarterly27: pp.383–90.
