Media Studies in the UK has endured a decidedly chequered history. Since the late 1980s the subject has experienced massive and rapid growth in secondary, further and higher educational institutions. This continuing growth in demand for and provision of media courses in the UK has, however, rarely been seen or framed as 'good news' or a success story. In contrast, the public image of the field as embodied in recurrent cycles of press and related media coverage has tended to denigrate, question and contest its legitimacy. While there have been some more encouraging signs in recent coverage, it may be a peculiarity of the current UK cultural and educational configurations that the well established, internationally respected range of media studies courses have to be routinely called to account and ritually 'put in their place '. In what follows, we provide a contextualizing commentary on this state of affairs, first outlining the chief 'angles of attack' and critique that have characterized the public image of the subject. This is then followed by an overview of key curricula formations and associated tensions that have underpinned the field and its growth throughout the past decade. Central to this has been an increasing concentration on vocationalism and the discourses of 'employability'. We present a commentary on these discourses and, in the remainder of the discussion, report on the findings of a three-year, funded UK research project which was designed to investigate the meanings and perceptions of 'employability' held by participants in the media studies curriculum: teachers, students, graduates and employers. The commentary concludes with a reflection on the research outcomes of the project. We welcome responses to the themes and issues broached and outlined in what follows from the full readership of Media, Culture & Society, dispersed across the international academic community.

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The title, Stations of the Cross, is a play on the critical religious tension at the heart of the book. The Catholic ritual of meditation on the stages of Christ's harrowing passion can be translated into a reflection on social suffering and solidarity, for Paul Apostolidis a fertile symbol of the radical potential of the Christian message perverted by radio stations broadcasting right-wing Christian programmes. Apostolidis's investigation draws on a wide range of Frankfurt School theory, taking its most direct theoretical impetus from the broken promise of Theodor W. Adorno's uncompleted 1943 study of an American proto-fascistic Christian radio agitator. This recently republished study, The Psychological Technique of Martin Luther Thomas ' Radio Addresses (Adorno, 2000b), combined Adorno's simultaneously developing theories of the culture industry and authoritarianism.Apostolidis seeks to refine Adorno's model through its application to more recent -and much more mainstream -evangelical Christian culture, specifically Focus on the Family, the eponymous radio flagship of a big American religious organization. The radio show is presented by an educational psychologist, Dr James Dobson, who became a public figure in the 1970s in the wake of his 3-million copy best-seller, Dare to Discipline (Dobson, 1970). With its Christian critique of the permissive counter-culture, this text was an early proponent of the 'traditional family values' still beloved of authoritarian populists of all political shades today. Dobson is not himself a preacher or a politician (bar a little dabbling), but popular evangelicals and right-wing ideologues guest regularly on his show. He served on advisory committees for Ronald Reagan, and also had the ear of George Bush Senior.Apostolidis's study revolves round a nice typology of Dobson's cronies, reproducing something of the character of Adorno's shrewdly exaggerated sketches of proto-fascistic psychological types. Most often, Dobson entertains 'compassionate professionals' like himself. These hearts of gold assume a beguiling mantle of scientific and moral confidence in overauthoritative examinations of various socialpsychological issues of deep concern to beleaguered American parents. Their broadcasts function as an unconscious parody of Freudian-Marxist critical theory, turning a concern with the family's role as a mediator between psyche and society to conformist ends in a highly pernicious sort of (sub) Freudian-Conservatism. One

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