Granta 53: News

Granta 53, Spring 1996 - News issue. Theme: News. Scoops, lies and videotape: inside the media business. A New story by Paul Theroux and introducing a new voice in American Fiction, Paul Beatty. What's new about news? The same stuff, surely, came galloping from Gaul to Rome, arrived at quaysides in sailing packets, was tapped out in Morse through submarine cables. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines news as information about important or interesting events especially when published or broadcast, newly received or noteworthy information. A shorter definition is: man bites dog. A new definition would be: men bite dogs, dogs sell story. That is the news about news: there is much more of it, and more than ever it is a commodity to be sold, bought , and marketed, News has become an entertainment and a global industry, deploying all the usual strategies of commerce to increase its ratings and revenue and cut its costs. This issue of Granta examines some questions about news. Who makes it? Who owns it? Should we believe it? Contents: Interesting if True by Phillip Knightley. Brand Leader by Fintan O'Toole. Full Disclosuer by Zoe Heller. Two Dead in Car Blast by Linda Schuster. Writing for Nobody by Eric Jacobs. Here Come the Tanks by Patrick Wright. TV is Good for You by Dan Jacobson. The Trial by George Burn, photography by Tom Pilston. Taken Out of Context by Paul Beatty. Home is Here Now by David Xiao. The Lawyer's Story by Paul Theroux.