Gary James Merrill







The revolution must wait: Economic, business and financial journalisms beyond the 2008 crisis

Although it is tempting to blame journalism's apparent failure to warn of the 2008 financial crisis on a lack of training, rigid routines or an over-reliance on elite sources, the malaise is far more deep-seated. For the last three decades, the British and American news media have seemed largely oblivious to the inherent weaknesses of free market economics and equally, the merits of alternative models. Economic and business journalisms are the inevitable products of the ideology that sustains them and in the absence of a coherent, mainstream political counterweight to neoliberalism, it is left to authors, satirists and even TV chefs to provide engaging economic and business journalism with a social dimension

Keywords: business; economics; journalism; neoliberalism; alternatives; BBC


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Note on the contributor

Gary James Merrill is a senior lecturer in journalism at Buckinghamshire New University, and is nearing completion of his PhD at Goldsmiths College, University of London. His thesis, Prophets or profits: British economic and business reporting from 1999 to 2008, compares and contrasts how UK broadsheets and the BBC News website covered three important economic and business issues during the Labour Party's most recent period in government. Gary previously taught journalism at the University of Glamorgan and the University of Bedfordshire and has provided training courses for the National Union of Journalists, ITV Wales and S4C. From 2001 to 2008, he taught at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, and before his teaching career, he was a freelance business journalist specialising in the technology industry.