book review

“Disinformation Correspondent” is surely a top contender in the Orwellian job title stakes. The BBC’s Marianna Spring has “and Social Media” tagged on, but that’s not her focus. Social media, as she explains in this disturbing book, is just the vehicle for spreading unfounded scare stories, half-baked pseudoscience, racist bigotry and unadulterated hate.

Spring, winner of the RTS Television Journalism Awards 2023 Innovation prize, has delved deep in the cesspool of disinformation and unearthed some of the mad, bad and sad characters who inhabit the cyber underground.

Pandora’s Box is like a greatest hits album. It is Now That’s What I Call Music! Vol 87, but for tele­vision and covering more than three decades, rather than focusing on a single annus mirabilis. We know the lyrics, love the melodies and can sing along to the rousing choruses.

This important book has been more than 10 years in the making and, by a fortunate chance, it has been published in the BBC’s centenary year, just a few years ahead of the centenary of television itself. 

As Professor Medhurst points out, the history of television is an enormous subject. Its early days can be summarised by man of letters Samuel Johnson’s quotation about a dog walking on its hind legs: “It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.”