Shock of the News

Confessions of a Murdoch Troublemaker

Jonathan Miller

$44.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English

Gibson Square Books Ltd
01 August 2025

Biography: business & industry; Autobiography: business & industry; Popular culture; Press & journalism

As Rupert Murdoch’s 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 Britain’s 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 Murdoch’s tech adviser and disruptor-in-chief, to war reporting in Kosovo, the UK’s first news site, Piers Morgan’s Uncensored and bare-knuckle reporting on the follies of rural Britain.

These spiky confessions trace through the Murdoch empire’s 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...

By: Jonathan Miller
Imprint: Gibson Square Books Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 230g
ISBN: 9781783342860
ISBN 10: 1783342862
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 01 August 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

1 'I'm 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

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.