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Turbulence in British Politics: The First Two Years of the Major Government
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
Abstract
The expression post-globalization was chosen here because it is more comprehensive than the now much more popular ‘post-cold war’. While the latter has the advantage of offering a chronological turning point (the formalities of the end of the 1980s), in reality it is only the ideologico-military effect of a series of simultaneous changes in the world brought about in the last decade by the still ongoing and unpredictable information revolution. These changes affect all information and kinds of communication in the whole world and therefore justify the name of globalization - and for the transitional era which follows, of post-globalization in which we now live.
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- Original Articles
- Information
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- Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1994
References
page 194 note 1 It is necessary to stress first that the case of the media as presented here is based primarily on British sources, and that, secondly, even there distinctions must be made. For instance, when it is stated here that the press of today combines information and opinion indissolubly, qualifications should be made for two national newspapers for opposite reasons: the Financial Times as being obviously more inclined to put information above opinion and the Guardian for putting opinion first and openly although also providing abundant information. And when it comes to television, exception must be made for the BBC which is not commercial. That does not mean that the BBC is politically, or even ethically, an example of objectivity or purity. What has often been descibed as the ‘spirit of the house’ is deeply institutionalized in the BBC's public attitudes.
Finally, it should also be made clear that the complete example of what is generally called here the media is the only one really complete Murdoch-owned national, multi-and transnational operation. In Britain the Murdoch empire includes two down-market papers, the daily The Sun and the Sunday News of the World which support two up-market papers, the daily The Times and the weekly The Sunday Times, and are directly linked with the TV satellite station Sky. It is the perfect model of the ‘multimedia’ as Big Business.
page 196 note 2 I add in the proofs some recent remarks: in the Financial Times of Saturday 19 March 1994, Philip Stephens (last page of the supplement) writes: ‘Sex sells newspapers. Sex in high places sells even more. When there is no allerged security angle John Major's ill-fated back to basics initiative provides sufficient cover . . . But there has been another big change, previously the broadsheet press would have ignored some of the recent scandals . . . nor is television and radio news immune. Where once the bulletins would report such incidents only if and when someone resigned, they now take their leads from the tabloids. Prophecies of resignations and assertions of public interest become self-fulfilling.’
And in the Sunday Telegraph of 20 March 1994 John Keagan writes: ‘The press is treading on very thin ice. Circulations are in decline and if the readership were to find a more palatable source of news and comment — as television, sharpened by deregulation is now providing, they could decline precipitiously. Editors, locked in the competition for sensation can think of serving up only more of the same.’