Breaking News - The Remaking of Journalism and Why It Matters Now

How do we know any more what is true and what isn?t? We are living through the greatest communication revolution since Gutenberg, one in which falsehood regularly seems to overwhelm truth. In Breaking News, Alan Rusbridger offers an urgent and agenda-setting examination of the past, present and future of the press, and the forces menacing its freedom.

The news media has been disrupted by huge and fast-moving changes in the ecumenic and technological models of information. The growth of social media has changed journalism for ever as well as creating an existential threat to traditional players. The ability of billions of people to publish has created a vast amount of unreliable and false news which now competes with and sometimes drowns more established forms of journalism. The President of the United States regularly lies to the public and brands his critics ?fake?. Politicians openly rubbish the views of ?so called experts?. Where can we look for reliable, verifiable sources of news and information? What does it mean for democracy? And what will the future hold?

Reflecting on his twenty years as editor of the Guardian during a time of unprecedented digital disruption; and his experience of breaking some of the most significant news stories of our time, including the Edward Snowden revelations, phone-hacking, Wikileaks and the Keep in the Ground campaign, Rusbridger answers these questions and offers a stirring defence of why quality journalism matters now more than ever.