Brett Nicholls is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media, Film and Communication at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He has published work on postcoloniality, most recently with a special journal issue of Critical Race and Whiteness Studies on the work of Edward Said, as well as articles on technology, media and politics. MEDIANZ • VOL 15 • NO 2 • 2015 DOI: 10.11157/medianz-vol15iss2id156 - REVIEW ARTICLE - Anti-Ideological Ideology: Sean Phelan’s critique of journalism in Neoliberalism, Media and the Political Brett Nicholls Neoliberalism, Media and the Political offers an explanation for why and how established news media rarely question and challenge neoliberalism. The central argument of the book is not that journalists are unabashed cheerleaders for neoliberalism, or thoroughly duped by corporate forces, it is that the ‘professional ideologies and practices’ of journalists are inculcated in neoliberalism’s anti-ideological and post-political discourses. Phelan maintains the journalistic ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu) is marked by a ‘modernist imaginary’ (Phelan 2014, 97), in which ‘objectivity, accuracy, balance, political detachment and the watchdog principle are still important tenets of journalism practice’ (Phelan 2014, 98). This imaginary means that journalists have, in effect, a natural disposition toward neoliberalism. The realist journalistic style that results from a modernist imaginary aims to be as disinterested as possible in the objects of reporting. We might say that journalists, perhaps credulously, seek to tell-it-like-it-is, rather than evaluate or assess via an interpretive framework such as marxism, liberalism, conservatism and so on. So even when journalists express political opinions—as in op- ed pieces—such expressions claim to be ‘fair and balanced’ and non-ideological. What this means, for Phelan, is that journalists have a blind spot with respect to neoliberalism. In Phelan’s account, neoliberal ideology is the Keyser Soze of politics, to borrow from Bryan Singer’s notable film, The Usual Suspects (1995): ‘The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.’ For Phelan, neoliberalism is an ideological discourse that paradoxically functions as non-ideology. We could say that neoliberalism is thoroughly postmodern. It is coterminous with the paradoxical formulations of contemporary culture that Žižek endlessly repeats, such as in non-consumerist consumption, unbelieving belief, insecure security, and so on. The book is thus clearly located in current debates on the problem of ideology and the post-political. However, Phelan doesn't explicitly engage with this broad post-political context. Instead, he historically locates his argument in the emergence of neoliberal ideas, which he skilfully traces back to the works of Hayek and