News and How to Use It
What to Believe in a Fake News World
Available as eBook, Downloadable audio
An A–Z guide on how we stay informed in the era of fake news, from former Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger
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.
“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
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“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, Bbc
“[Rusbridger] was one of the stand-out editors of his generation and it shows in his book: an astute and agreeably random canter through the imperfect world of journalism in Britain and America … erudite”
financial Times
“An agreeable and very worthwhile book. It invites you to think and question. It is informative and entertaining”
scotsman
“Smart, relevant and punchy … a powerful light in the darkness”
evening Standard
Alan Rusbridger is editor of Prospect. Previously he 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. He was for six years Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and chairs the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. He is a member of the global Facebook Oversight Board, which regulates content on the social media platform.
@arusbridger | arusbridger.com