Popular news in the 21st century: Time for a new critical approach?

This paper is a brief review and critique of the main scholarly approaches to thinking about popular forms of news in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, particularly in regards to broadcast television. Rather than advocating the merits of either popular or ‘hard’ news, it will discuss the possibility of finding (or revisiting) a critical approach to popular news and current affairs journalism that charts a suitable middle-ground: one that can accommodate the emergence of popular informational programs (e.g. The Awful Truth, The Daily Show) and one that moves away from the sometimes too simplistic binary discourses that have tended to become characteristic of recent debates over ‘tabloidisation’

Pink-eyed Dilution Protein Modulates Arsenic Sensitivity and Intracellular Glutathione Metabolism

Mutations in the mouse p (pink-eyed dilution) and human P genes lead to melanosomal defects and ocular developmental abnormalities. Despite the critical role played by the p gene product in controlling tyrosinase processing and melanosome biogenesis, its precise biological function is still not defined. We have expressed p heterologously in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to study its function in greater detail. Immunofluorescence studies revealed that p reaches the yeast vacuolar membrane via the prevacuolar compartment. Yeast cells expressing p exhibited increased sensitivity to a number of toxic compounds, including arsenicals. Similarly, cultured murine melanocytes expressing a functional p gene were also found to be more sensitive to arsenical compounds compared with p-null cell lines. Intracellular glutathione, known to play a role in detoxification of arsenicals, was diminished by 50% in p-expressing yeast. By using the glutathione-conjugating dye monochlorobimane, in combination with acivicin, an inhibitor of vacuolar gamma-glutamyl cysteine transpeptidase, involved in the breakdown of glutathione, we found that p facilitates the vacuolar accumulation of glutathione. Our data demonstrate that the pink-eyed dilution protein increases cellular sensitivity to arsenicals and other metalloids and can modulate intracellular glutathione metabolism