In an uneasy marriage of theory and empirical research, D. V. Khabaz argues that the Frankfurt School's theory of “culture industry” allows scholars to understand better the functioning of mass media in modern Britain. To support this argument, he explores the nature and attitudes of the popular press during the Thatcher governments by using culture industry theory to connect the increasing concentration of press ownership during the 1980s with the rightward shift of newspaper sympathies and, in turn, the popular acceptance of Thatcherite ideals and policies.

The first two chapters are theoretical and methodological in focus and will likely frustrate a reader expecting a monograph focused on Thatcher and the 1984–85 miners’ strike. Chapter 1 explores the theory of the Frankfurt School, with particular emphasis on the writings of Theodor Adorno. In short, Adorno used the phrase “culture industry” to refer to the increasingly standardized media output in a modern capitalist society. For Khabaz, there are four features of Adorno's theory that require close attention. “Standardization” refers to the “sameness” of media products, the growing concentration of media ownership, and the consumer desire for “familiar” products (40–41). “Pseudo-individuality” refers to the illusion of consumer choice among the increasingly similar and imitative media products. The last two features—“schematization” and “stereotypes”—both refer to the media presentation of information in common, prepackaged forms for their audiences. The culture industry uses “schema” for the “patterning or pre-forming of the audience's experience” (43) and “stereotypes” for the easy categorization and evaluation of individual and groups (44–45).

In the second chapter, Khabaz shifts to a broad analysis of Thatcherism and to a related statement of his research methodology. He rejects several conceptualizations of Thatcherism, including Stuart Hall's “authoritarian populism” (95), as being too narrow in their understanding of the nature and establishment of Thatcherite ideals and policies. Khabaz instead poses the concept of “multi-faceted populism,” defined as “a historically specific Conservative political movement which successfully mobilized multi-class support for its neo-liberal social, economic and political agenda” (105). This definition stresses that Thatcherism was not achieved through “blanket indoctrination” but was in fact supported, promoted, and maintained by “an unsettled alliance of different actors who found it suitable for their owns gains and interests” (120).

With this concept in place, Khabaz introduces the popular press as an integral element of this Thatcherite alliance in the 1980s and establishes his research agenda. An analysis of popular press coverage of miners’ strikes in the 1970s and 1980s, he argues, will demonstrate the extent to which British newspapers, as part of the culture industry, actually “manufactured” popular Thatcherite sensibilities (119). Chapter 3, in this regard, shows the way in which the British press was in fact “standardized” during the 1980s as a few media moguls, such as Rupert Murdoch, acquired more and more newspapers and streamlined their production with the newest computer technology. Khabaz illuminates how these press barons shared natural sympathies with Thatcherism, particularly the assault on organized labor. As they faced union opposition to the downsizing of the print industry, the press barons were more than willing “to utilize media power to provide support for the Thatcherite ethos” (194).

Khabaz seeks to substantiate this claim in chapter 4 by analyzing the editorials of numerous popular newspapers during the 1972–74 and 1984–85 miners’ strikes. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, Khabaz does in fact demonstrate how popular press coverage of these events differed considerably between the decades. Utilizing the concepts of “schema” and “stereotype,” he shows the remarkably less sympathetic portrait painted of the miners and their plight in the 1984–85 strike. The problem, of course, is that Khabaz cannot actually prove that such a shift occurred because of the changed nature of the newspaper industry itself, and he ignores the possibility that other social, economic, and/or political changes between 1974 and 1984 could account for some or all of the harsh reaction to the miners. Moreover, he cannot—as he admits himself at the end—prove a causal relationship between shifting attitudes of the press toward the miners and shifting popular attitudes toward the miners. However sympathetic one might find him or herself toward this argument, Khabaz's attempts to correlate public opinion polls with newspaper coverage are ultimately tenuous.

Khabaz does pose some interesting observations about the press industry in the Thatcher era, and his analysis of popular newspapers does show how right wing the popular press had become by the 1980s. The most fundamental problem with the book, however, is poor organization and editing. Extraneous sections in the first two chapters make it difficult to see where the book is heading, and frequently missing punctuation makes a sometimes convoluted read even more frustrating. Khabaz constantly pauses to explain what he has argued, is arguing, or will argue, but his concern only underlines the need for a more straightforward and compact argument.