Working in the media is now to work within The service industry, with all the conciet that this involves - creativity stifled by a PR agenda, leading to a lack of journalism and analysis and a blindness on the part of those who make up the media to accept responsibility for their participation in this machine. But so few people do, and this pollution is passed on to the consumer like a poisoned chalice. They are morbid symptoms of a deeper malaise - a culture that has lost its nerve and whose future is invested in the brutalising hunt for the lowest common denominators. One source of theis pollution is the application of market forces , or 'deregulation' to newspapers, magazines, and TV, a process that has only been compounded by the current recession. Let there be no doubt - an expanded market in any area does not mean a choice of superior products or services, but homogenization.
Deregulation is no paean to freedom.
Quite the reverse. To enable the profits to be reaped more efficiently, behind the hype of th free market, is an increasingly complex computer system, st up for marketing, which means that the consumer is increasingly regulated. In this process of replacement, the concepts of welfare, community and mutual support are being abandoned in favour of a survivalism which promotes itself under the banner of 'opportunity' - atrophy in fact, since the very idea of individuality and personal transformation is under attack. The rhetoric of change is used to make the current policies that support this country's obsessive protectionism seem dynamic. To privatise yourself.