Fayke Newes: The Media vs the Mighty, From Henry VIII to Donald Trump
Derek J. Taylor2018

‘Fake news’. ‘Dishonest press’. ‘Racist’. ‘Mentally unstable’. The insults President Donald Trump and the American news media hurl at each other are nothing new. In Tudor England, printed papers branded the monarch a ‘horrible monster’, and were in turn accused of publishing ‘false fables’. Ever since the invention of the printing press, those in power have seen mass communication as a dangerous threat, usurping their ability to tell people what to think, and capable of stirring up discontent and even rebellion. In Fayke Newes, historian and international journalist Derek J. Taylor tracks this long and bloody fight between the press and those in power through the lives of the men and women who got caught up in the battle. On a journey through the centuries, we crisscross the Atlantic between Britain and America, during wars and in peacetime, and discover that neither governments nor journalists have always told the truth. And, in our own time, when social media has put mass communication in the hands of anyone with a smart-phone – from a certain US President, to any crook, liar or foreign enemy – Taylor asks: What hope for the rest of us who just want to know what’s really going on?