CAMRI | The Battle for Understanding: the pandemic of disinformation, and the role of the BBC

The Battle for Understanding: the pandemic of disinformation, and the role of the BBC

A Public Lecture by Jean Seaton, published by Birkbeck

In February 2020 Birkbeck marked 100 years since the College officially became part of the University of London. As part of this celebration Birkbeck hosted a lecture series and Professor Jean Seaton joins us to deliver a talk on “The Battle for Understanding: the pandemic of disinformation, and the role of the BBC” followed by a Q&A session. This lecture was broadcast live and recorded on Wednesday 11th November 2020.

About Jean Seaton

Jean Seaton is Professor of Media History and the Official Historian of the BBC. She will publish in the Autumn of 2024 the next volume of the Corporations story, Holding the Line: the BBC and the Nation, taking Lord Asa Briggs work forward for Profile Books. This involves everything the BBC did in a tumultuous decade from the conflict in Northern Ireland, to the invasion of the Falklands, to Not the Nine O'Clock News, the Proms, the early music revolution, devolution, Dennis Potter's greatest plays, Attenborough's revolutionary series Life on Earth, and Radio 1s most influential moment, as well as the role of women in the Corporation, programmes for children and a tense and complicated relationship with the government. The historian was given privileged access to BBC archives, but also gained privileged access to state papers. For the first time the Corporation's history is seen in the round. It has depended on several hundred interviews, and explores both the programme making decision that go into the making of an iconic Television series like John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but also the high politics around the imposition of the broadcasting ban.