Back when the economy was a matter of soybeans and steel, it seemed like dull stuff. High tech has made business sexy. One result is that products themselves have become the news, the epicenter of what s fit to print. The news today often reads like a kind of Commodities on Parade. Release of a new Microsoft Windows upgrade gets the kind of coverage once reserved for a revolution in China.
News weeklies tout products as front-page stories.
Shop Till You Drop. National Public Radio, which is supposed to be an alternative to the corporate media, is becoming a case study of how ads and news have morphed into one another. The Sunday after the WTO meetings, the following sequence ran on the network s Weekend Edition. First was a report from Seattle that described the protestors as bent on revolution. There was little inquiry into what they actually thought.