Media & Values: Intimate Transgressions in a Changing Moral and Cultural Landscape

Media & Values provides a major empirical investigation into the moral performance of the media. Based on 22 focus groups, three nationally representative questionnaire surveys and interviews with senior media personnel and regulators, this book charts the changing position of the media as a moral voice representing ways in which we live. A central theme of the study is how television has lost moral authority to pronounce on the way we should live and instead has increasingly reflected, and given visibility to, the values and norms of a variety of social groups. The book examines not just the lack of moral certainty that has overtaken television, but the lack of moral certainty of the audience in discussing social, moral and political issues. Particular attention is also given to the whole question of privacy in modern society and the performance of the media in intruding into private performances.

Keywords: culture in practise, moral language, anti-social behaviour, views of authority