Books & Spoken Word
Nick Cohen
Award-winning journalist, Nick Cohen, discusses whether social media is ruining journalism and politics.
The last decade has seen the unrelenting rise of social media. Millions of people now get their first view of news and opinion from Facebook and Twitter. This has not just had an impact on newspaper sales; it has seen fundamental changes in news gathering and reporting. It has also seen the rise of fake news, debates about what truth means, alternative facts, and attacks on journalists, experts, elites and “the MSM”. What has it meant to be a journalist and commentator in the midst of this? What would a world of news look like if social media continues to grow and newspapers fail? What does this mean for civic and political life?
Nick Cohen is one of our leading commentators with a weekly column in the Observer and a regular writer for the Spectator and Standpoint. He looks at the future of journalism and political debate in this new age.
This event is part of Festival of Ideas’ annual Coleridge Series, inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s wide-ranging and radical lectures in Bristol in the 1790s.
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