In our society, choices decrease to the extent that they matter. When it comes to chocolate bars, the options are impressive - supermarket shelves are filled with them. When it comes to political parties, foreign policy and the media, choices merge, narrow and disappear to nothing.
Defenders of the mainstream media tell us there is a wide spectrum of views - we have, for example, a choice between the 'right-wing' Times and the 'left-wing' Observer, they say. George Orwell took a different view:
"I really don't know which is more stinking, the Sunday Times or The Observer. I go from one to the other like an invalid turning from side to side in bed and getting no comfort which ever way he turns." (George Orwell, quoted, Bernard Crick, George Orwell, A Life, p.233, Penguin Books, 1992).
As regular readers of our Media Alerts will know, the bedsores are as irksome now as ever they were in Orwell's day.
In his outstanding work, The Ambiguities of Power - British Foreign Policy. Since 1945 - historian Mark Curtis tells us a little about our choices when it comes to deciding who to kill and exploit in foreign countries:
Defenders of the mainstream media tell us there is a wide spectrum of views - we have, for example, a choice between the 'right-wing' Times and the 'left-wing' Observer, they say. George Orwell took a different view:
"I really don't know which is more stinking, the Sunday Times or The Observer. I go from one to the other like an invalid turning from side to side in bed and getting no comfort which ever way he turns." (George Orwell, quoted, Bernard Crick, George Orwell, A Life, p.233, Penguin Books, 1992).
As regular readers of our Media Alerts will know, the bedsores are as irksome now as ever they were in Orwell's day.
In his outstanding work, The Ambiguities of Power - British Foreign Policy. Since 1945 - historian Mark Curtis tells us a little about our choices when it comes to deciding who to kill and exploit in foreign countries: