As Rupert Murdochs tech advisor and founder of the leading communications journal in the US, Jonathan Miller rode the exhilarating first technology wave of the news with satellite TV that made Murdoch the Elon Musk/Mark Zuckerberg of his day. But he was also the founder of Britains first news website, Camden Lock, and was a first-hand witness how Murdoch lost the internet revolution by being unfocused and misunderstanding the nature of the news.
Concerned about the AI revolution and control passing entirely from the journalists to engineers, Jonathan wrote this passionate plea about the function of the news machine and how its important function to shock is being squandered in a catch-up chase for traffic by old media companies. There is still time to pull it back if only we understand why news can neither be replaced by AI and what we need to do.
The young Jonathan Miller had an innate talent to annoy authority as a pupil at Bedales school. When he discovered that the news can be like a hand grenade, he had found his calling. pursuit of creating a stir, he ended up in many different places, from Rupert Murdochs tech adviser and disruptor-in-chief, to war reporting in Kosovo, the UKs first news site, Piers Morgans Uncensored and bare-knuckle reporting on the follies of rural Britain.
These spiky confessions trace through the Murdoch empires secrets, the tech revolution that preceded the web, Bart Simpson, Margaret Thatcher, the doomed fate of wokeness, and trouble in an era flattened by AI. Tech and the media world will never look the same...
Jonathan Miller has worked in the UK, Europe and US as a Rupert Murdoch tech advisor, media founder, Sunday Times leader writer and columnist, war correspondent, and contributor to the New York Times, Washington Post and MSNBC. A Macron-watcher, he currently writes for the Spectator and Daily Mail.
1 Im Not Interrupting You-Am I?
2 Shock of the News
3 The Art of Trouble
4 Newspapering
5 The Sticks
6 Vile Snakes
7 Insurrections
8 The Biggest Gamble
9 Making Mischief
10 Camden Lock
11 Fired
12 The European
13 War
14 A Spy
15 Animal Farm
16 Exile
17 Surely Not the Royals
18 Homage to Catalonia
19 Rescued by Macron
20 The Naked Emperor
21 Coffee House
22 My War with the BBC
23 Believers
24 The Trillion Dollar Brain
25 The Hand that Feeds . . .
26 Controlling the Present
27 The End of the News Machine?
28 Advice to Troublemakers
After the Binge
Endnotes
Index
A bare-knuckle read. Andrew Neil
A spirited eye and troublemaker. Sarah Baxter, former Deputy Editor Sunday Times
