In this essay Peter Moss argues that television news are an interesting and instructive example of our current condition of culture, embracing both the modern and the post-modern. He uses textual analysis to indicate that while the methods of news presentations and the details of narrative structure may be relatively complex, many events in political and social history are theoretical with the imperatives of this medium’s entertainment principles. For mass commercial television news productions, the cultural judgments that must lie behind the selections pose cultural and social dilemmas. However Moss argues that for individual members of the audience, the surfaces of social and private life are constantly changing, and by eschewing placements