In case you can’t make it to Cambridge, here is an outline of the arguments presented in Can You Trust The Media? There will be a launch event at City University on 30 April at 6.30pm. More details later.

If you’d like to review the book online contact me for a pdf. But first what does CYTTM actually say?

The first two chapters look in detail at the recent crises in trust – the what, who, when, where and why of the events that have brought this issue to dominate so much of the public headspace – from the ethics of the editors of the Sun to the blatant fictions of the New York Times to the downfall of a generation of BBC bosses.

Chapter three looks at what I call the phenomenon of ‘media bulimia’, a compulsive modern pandemic caused by the viral reproduction of media into our awake time, and even our dreams. Where does it all come from, this media, and how do we live in the world it creates?

In chapter four, we look at the impact of the internet on trust. Can technology ‘solve’ trust? Or are we just getting new platforms that generate their own issues?

In chapter five, we examine that important sub-set of the media: the news. News is how we frame our world, it is the glasses we put on when we try to read our circumstances. It occupies a special place in our lives and always has. The question is, what do we want from our news?

To understand that, we have to look at why it is produced the way it is, and from there we can ask how news is likely to change over the next few years.

Throughout history, the media has been accused of power broking, of throwing its weight around in its own interests, of making and breaking our democracy. Well, maybe.
In chapter six, I also look at the source of these rumours and think a bit about how true they might be.

Chapters seven and eight break the history of media trust into modern and ancient – modern history beginning with the birth of the American newspaper culture at the start of the twentieth century, and ancient with Gutenberg’s invention of moveable type.

Conclusions are hard to come by in this morass, but there is one thing that I am convinced of and that is the more public information available, the better. In chapter nine, using recent UK terrorism cases along with examples from the world of business and their treatment by the media, I put forward my argument for a more transparent society. For me, transparency and information supersede our need for trust.