Financialization of cultural industries reduces media diversity and creative stability

Evidence

This book has argued that the American media sector is being devoured by Wall Street. The financialization of the cultural industries is leading to a reduction in the scope, heterogeneity, and diversity of our media culture. It is redistributing wealth upward, making creative work more precarious, and producing derivative, intellectual-property-based culture. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 454

This book has argued that the American media sector is being devoured by Wall Street. The financialization of the cultural industries is leading to a reduction in the scope, heterogeneity, and diversity of our media culture. It is redistributing wealth upward, making creative work more precarious, and producing derivative, intellectual-property-based culture. We have a deeply unhealthy, unequal media system that is contributing to the many crises we have today. A more just media system would help us communicate the values and strategies needed in the fight for a more just world. As we consider how to reform this corrupt system, we must acknowledge that financialization is not only a key corrupting element, but it is accelerating in the shadows. We need critical financial literacy and we need financial reform that would produce media reform. Taming and regulating the financial sector could go a long way toward rescuing and revitalizing the media sector and, with it, a dynamic democracy. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 454

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concise one-sentence summary of what financialization does to media — useful anchor for the reader’s finance-to-form tracing project.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing question on whether ownership structure leaves fingerprints on artistic form; this is the author’s central causal thesis. — connects to: Creative-industries policy funded corporate-sponsored art projects instead of public services — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 460; Financialization colonizes culture by fusing economic price with social value — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 561
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media: How Wall Street…, 454