News and How to Use It: What to Believe in a Fake News World

by Alan Rusbridger

Overview

Nothing in life works without facts.

A society that isn't sure what's true can't function. Without facts there can be no government or law. Science is ignored. Trust evaporates.

People everywhere feel ever more alienated from - and mistrustful of - news and those who make it. We no longer seem to know who or what to believe. We are living through a crisis of 'information chaos'.

News: And How to Use It is a glossary for this bewildering age. From AI to Bots, from Climate Crisis to Fake News, from Clickbait to Trolls (and more), here is the definitive user's guide for how to stay informed, tell truth from fiction and hold those in power accountable in the modern age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781838851613
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	03/02/2021
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.45(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alan Rusbridger was Editor-in-Chief of Guardian News & Media from 1995 to 2015. He launched the Guardian in the US and Australia as well as building a website which today attracts more than 100 million unique browsers a month. The paper's coverage of phone-hacking led to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards and ethics. Guardian US won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service for its leading global coverage of the Snowden revelations. He is the author of Play It Again and Breaking News. He lives in London and Oxford, where he is Principal of Lady Margaret Hall and chairs the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
@arusbridger | arusbridger.com

Editorial Reviews

A fascinating book and an important one

Scotsman

Engaging . . . We love a good newspaper yarn, and Rusbridger provides a dandy

Financial Times

The portrait of Rusbridger that emerges is that of the rarest of newsroom species - someone with genuine bona fides as a journalist and an unassailable commitment to the profession's enduring values, who also possesses the curiosity, nimbleness of mind and openness to change necessary to navigate the relentless, shape-shifting challenges that lie ahead for media companies today. The cascading crises afflicting journalism are now, rightly, understood to be threats to American democracy. It is hardly an overstatement, then, to say that the health of our society depends, in part, on future Rusbridgers emerging to take the reins of our news organisations

New Yorker

Alan Rusbridger is one of the most important journalists of his generation . . . this book needs to be read

Independent Whig.

Well written and unskimped, this will be a painful document when we wake up one morning with nothing to read at breakfast except our smartphones

Times Literary Supplement, Best Books of the Year - TOM STOPPARD

I particularly enjoyed Alan Rusbridger's Breaking News - in places it's as exciting as a thriller (and the good guys win) but it also gave me a new understanding of the difficulties that now confront good journalism

New Statesman, Best Books of 2018 - HENRY MARSH

Just when we were feeling lost in the dark labyrinth of fake news and journalism in crisis, Alan Rusbridger lights his torch and leads the way. Essential

STEVE COOGAN

It was my good luck - and the world's - that Alan Rusbridger was the Guardian's editor when powerful governments tried to prevent the paper from revealing that they had deceived and disempowered their citizens. Alan is a fearless defender of the public interest who has had a singular career in journalism. His book is an urgent reminder that there is still a place for real journalism - indeed, our democracies depend on it

EDWARD SNOWDEN

Praise for Breaking News: [Rusbridger] has written a book of breathtaking range . . . The brilliant Breaking News is essential - and entertaining - reading

Observer - SIR HAROLD EVANS

The book [Rusbridger] has written is eloquent in its argument for well-resourced journalism, and never better than in its central narrative of how an old profession struggled to cope with a new technology that threatened it with obsolescence

Guardian - IAN JACK

If you are interested in the mechanics of the news, especially related to the times we are living in, going through and set to go through, then this book is a must

NIHAL ARTHANAYAKE

Smart, relevant and punchy . . . a powerful light in the darkness

Evening Standard

Given that Rusbridger is, in my opinion, one of the two great newspaper editors of the past half-century (the other is the late Harry Evans), anything he writes about the press is going to be worth reading . . . Many of the mini-essays are useful distillations of his experience in, and knowledge of, the industry

Guardian