20 Things That Would Make the News Better

In this unique book, one of British broadcasting’s most experienced voices examines how the news can be made better at a time of existential threat.

Amid a welter of fake news, clickbait, rogue voices on social media, demographically dwindling viewers and external threats from the government, Roger Mosey argues that public service broadcasting must buck those trends, eschew the binary and go back to basics.

This book describes twenty core ways in which the news can save itself by getting smarter, sharper, less responsive to social media, more impartial, more diverse, more nuanced and less of a punchbag for politicians.

Mosey argues that we are at a defining point in the history of the news and offers a vision of two possible futures: one in which the incitements of populist demagogues, the passions of social media and the lure of fake news are ever more dominant – or one where we fight hard to retain media that has an interest in the public good, and where we try to preserve truth, fairness and evidence-based judgements.

Author Biography

Roger Mosey’s extraordinary career in broadcasting has encompassed jobs such as editor of Today on BBC Radio 4, controller of BBC Radio 5 Live, head of BBC television news and director of the Corporation’s London 2012 Olympic Games coverage. He is now master of Selwyn College, Cambridge. He is the author of Getting Out Alive: News, Sport and Politics at the BBC (Biteback, 2015).