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This paper applies and develops Marx’s concept of the fetish generally and technological fetishism specifically to how digital ICTs are influencing the craft of journalism. Although largely theoretical, its analysis of technological fetishism is applied to the findings of a survey conducted in 2013 among Canadian journalistic workers. The paper finds that these workers hold mixed and often contradictory views on how digital technologies are shaping their work and profession. By understanding ICTs to be both constitutive of journalism and, more precisely, the technological fetish as a mediating force in its development, the paper argues that the survey respondents are not ‘wrong’ to recognize that digital technologies seem to possess inherent powers. Because the fetishization of digital technologies is rooted in the relational conditions of contemporary journalism and neoliberal capitalism, redressing these – rather than just efforts to think reflexively about them – is what needs to be strategically prioritized. Indeed, both critical thought, using the concept of technological fetishism, and political action are needed if the insecurities and deleterious transformations taking place in journalism are to be modified and the democratizing potentials of digital ICTs fully realized.

In this article, the recent strategic turn by U.S.-based media corporations toward the use of broadband technologies, particularly online video, is assessed as a turning point in how news is being conceptualized, distributed, and consumed. Using the heuristic tool the integrated news spectacle, and its application to political, economic, and technological developments propelled forward by the 2005 Live 8 concerts, the authors analyze contemporary trajectories concerning the news and their more general implications regarding what Innisians refer to as the annihilation of time. Résumé : Dans cet article, la stratégie récente destinée à diriger les corporations des médias américains vers les technologies “broadband”, la vidéo sur Internet en particulier, est analysée comme un changement majeur en ce qui concerne la conceptualisation, la distribution et la consommation des nouvelles. Pour ce qui est de l’outil heuristique, le spectacle intégré des nouvelles, et de son application aux développements politiques, économiques, et technologiques avancés par les concerts “Live 8” de 2005, les auteurs analysent les trajectoires contemporaines vis- à-vis les nouvelles et les implications générales pour ce que les étudiants d’Innis appellent l’anéantissement du temps.