19.
MASS MEDIA
Text A.
SHOUTING AT THE BOX
ho'hss gd his finger on fie builon'
often fight obout whot to wofch on
TV ond who usuolly wins?
Remember the time when thete was no such thing as
a remote conttol fot the telly and you had to haul
youtself out of the atmchait to change channels? Now
everything is about to change agin with a new voice-
activated method.
The idea is that instead of pressing buttons, we will be
able to channel-hop simply by shouting commands at
the set, which vrill react using "voice recognition".
"Channel One, you'orrible litde telly'', gets you BBC1,
and so on. Can you imagine the chaos throughout the
Iiving rooms of Britain if this thing catches on? Atleast
with the zappet there is only one person in charge of
the set at a time. As fat as f can make out, using this
technique, vrhoevet shouts the quickestvdns. There'll
be my husband bellowing'three, thtee, thfee', for the
news, the kids screaming'six, six, six'for Sky, and me
shouting at it to switch itself off. At which point the
set will pr@bably have a bteakdown. Life was so much
simpler when the set stayed on the same channel for
tfuee days because no one could be bothered to get uP
and change it.
To haul - to pull youtself up, out of sth;
To bellow- to shout loudly, especidlyin lowvoice;
a sth;
Stalking - following someone ovet a pedod of time
(usually in order to or kill them);
To hrk- to vrait s ec.retl;rrr:s'.a.lly
because you are going to do somethingwrong
To reconnoitet - to try to find out the position and size
of the enemy's atmy, for example by flying planes over
land where their soldiets are;
To eavesdtoP - to listen sectedy to other people's
conversations;
Text B.
STALI{NG THE STARS _Y/
Whof h o poporozzo? Whot is the
iournolist ond o pcporozzo?
... You can't see them . But they'te there,lurking outside
the hotels of Majorca, reconnoitering the beach clubs
of the French Riviera, eavesdropping it ritzy
restaurants ftom Madrid to Monte Cado, hidingbehind
evergreens in St Moritz and palm treQin St Tropez.
Taking pictures is the least of their work, and many
aren't even vefy good photographers. 'I have no talent
for photography,t admits Rostain, who together with
Mouron nevertheless earns 1.5 million francs year
pddlsg snapshots of all the right people doing ^all the
wrong things. 'Papatazzi aten't supposed to do quality
photogaphy, but to get exclusive documents.'
ReaJ papanzzi, that is - not celebrity photogtaphers,
who work with the consent of theit subjects, whether
imolicit or exolicit. ReaI oaoarrzzi xe a r^re breed:
about a dozeneach in Ftance, Italy and SP^itt, fewer in
Britain. Even so, the competition is cutthroat. To
-
survive p^pxazzo must be intrePid, diligeng well-
^
connected - and patient. A true scoop. such as the
one that linked the Duchess of Yotk to her financial
adviser, takes weeks, sometimes months, of
preparation...
To peddle - to go ftom place to place, trlng to sell
Implicit - suggested or understood without being
stated &ecdy;
Expticit - expresed in away that i's rrety clear anA Aitect'
Intrepid willing to do dangerous things or go to
about it.