What Can Be Done?: Making the Media and Politics Better

What Can Be Done? makes an important contribution to public debate in Britain about the relationship between the media and politics, focusing in particular on the damage the media do to politics and the controls that politicians impose on the media.

The book comprises a series of challenging essays written by academics, journalists and political commentators, each one proposing reforms that could improve how the media perform and how politics functions. Addressing topical issues such as regulation, public service broadcasting, and how news is managed, these contributions recommend some key changes that would improve democracy in Britain by improving the quality of public debate. The focus of the book is on Britain, but key commentators from America and Europe put the British problems into perspective.

Notes on Contributors.

Introduction: Jean Seaton.

1. Hotting It Up: Jurgen Kronig.

2. The Virtues of an Unlovable Press: Michael Schudson.

3. The Epiphany of Joe Trippi: John Lloyd.

4. What s Good on Television?: Tim Gardam.

5. Can the BBC Invigorate our Political Culture?: Steven Barnett.

6. The Rise of the Ranters: Saving Political Journalism: Peter Riddell.

7. Morally Engaged: Reporters in Crises: Martin Woollacott.

8. Lacking a Clear Narrative: Foreign Reporting after the Cold War: Suzanne Franks.

9. Digitising Democracy: Georgina Born.

10. Little Citizens: Children, the Media and Politics: Jean Seaton.

11. On the Cusp: Finding New Visions for Social Gain from Broadcasting: Don Redding.

Index.

John Lloyd is a Contributing Editor to the Financial Times. He is a member of the editorial board of Prospect magazine, and of the Moscow School of Political Studies. He has won several top journalism awards and, in addition to TV and radio work, is a post editor of the New Statesmen and of Time Out. With others, he is creating the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. His most recent book is What The Media Are Doing To Our Politics.

Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster and is on the board of Political Quarterly. She was official historian of the BBC for the 1980s, and is the author of Carnage and the Media (2005).