麻豆约拍

Journalist and broadcaster Steve Richards presents a new, three part series examining the News.

From bulletins to rolling news and citizen journalism, from sensation to public service: what was News, what is it now and what will it become. Why is something 'news' and something else not, and what's the real thinking behind its production? Is the news a public service, a self-fulfilling cycle, an entertainment with its roots in sensation, a constant narrative of 'breaking' events, or a form of national communion and shared belonging?

Once a daily fix, now a 24/7 multimedia blitz, the news is ubiquitous, constant, insistent, updated every moment, multi-channelled and delivered in ever widening and more intimate formats. Perhaps one of the reasons we watch the news, beyond wanting actual information, is a need to feel incorporated into the world, a sense that we have internalised or are included in events on some level. Or is the picture a little darker - a deeper psychological appetite for images of disaster, reports of violence and intense distress that have no decipherable pattern or obvious national significance.

The series talks to reporters, journalists, editors, news producers, historians and experts - including Jon Snow, Sarah Sands, Alistair Campbell, Will Self, Adam Boulton, Ceri Thomas, Paul Staines (aka Guido Fawkes), Ed Stourton, Debora Turness, Kevin Williams, Roger Alton, John Birt, Andrew Pierce and psychotherapist Adam Phillips.

Producer: Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.