THERE was a time, before Postmodernism became a formal textual strategy for ignoring what is going on in the world, when one of the early postmodern bywords, “reflexivity,” connoted a kind of fun and carefree field of play, with a satirical overtone that made all kinds of intertextual relations possible. 

In today’s media field, however, reflexivity is a trick used to seal the discussion and make sure that the limited media parameters of discourse are never breached.

Nowhere is this hardening of the once playful strategy of reflexivity more apparent than in corporate media news. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, CNBC, ABC, NBC, and CBS news have given up reporting and analysing the news in any serious way and simply transcribe US State Department dispatches while chattering among themselves. The same goes for their ugly cousin Fox News which, rather than countering this blather, in simply providing a louder and brasher echo illustrates the emptiness of media for profit.