MANILA, Philippines - ?Shock and schlock? tabloid entertainment journalism has become a billion-dollar industry in the United States, and its smarmy effects are visible on that nation?s social fabric for everyone to see?and get ?schlocked? by.

But the industry that produces so much off-putting yet titillating celebrity gossip is by no means a ramshackle enterprise that?s easy to dismiss as a pop-cultural aberration. It is, in fact, a complex, high-stakes game that exploits, not just erring stars? weaknesses and excesses, but also the reading and viewing public?s seemingly unquenchable thirst for ?dirt.?

This shared aberration says volumes about people?s need to wallow in nastiness, and to delight in celebrities? misery. It?s as if ?ordinary? people resent the fact that celebrities are more famous and richer than they are, and are just waiting for them to stumble and fall, so they can feast on their fallen forms like uncultured vultures.

All too willing to give the vultures an assist by pointing them to where the celebrity carcasses are lying, the tabloid media are a high-stakes business so, it?s entirely right that the Velvet Channel?s new TV series, ?Dirt,? (Sundays, 10 p.m.) should strive to get under its skin and explore its bilious and corroded innards.

Smelly goods

Viewing the new series is an instructive and even occasionally mind-blowing experience, because it takes us into heretofore unknown or vague territory. With Courtney Cox playing the series? resident tabloid magazine editor, the show reveals how some show biz journalists are able to get the smelly goods on the big stars they?re gunning after:

A female star is pregnant but doesn?t want anybody to know about it, because it could affect the upward trajectory of her career. She doesn?t tell anybody about her pregnancy?other than her best friend. How to get the best friend to spill the beans? Her lover turns out to be a star down on his luck and in need of an assist from the magazine, so he?s ?persuaded? to expose the pregnancy.

Alas, the pregnant star, now exposed, ODs on drugs, so in this instance, at least, dishing the dirt ends in tragedy. That may not be par for the course for most show biz scoops, but it adds a decidedly pertinent, cautionary note to the dire proceedings.

That?s only one example of the ?brilliantly evil? ways that the tabloid mag?s editor thinks up to get the dirt on glittering stars and their smarmy private lives.

Media vixen

Cox does well as the series? resident media vixen, but she?s upstaged by the even more compelling performance turned in by Ian Hart as her chief photographer and all-around dirt-manager. The role is made riveting by the fact that the photographer is characterized as a psychological basket case.

While absorbing and compelling on their own, the dirt-digging sequences in this unusual drama series are made even more instructive by the fact that they illustrate the far-out extent that the amoral ?journalist? will go to scoop the competition.

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