Journalism Beyond Orwell

Journalism Beyond Orwell adapts and updates pioneering work by Richard Lance Keeble to explore George Orwell’s legacy as a journalist in original, critical – and often controversial – ways.

Though best known as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell was, throughout his career, a journalist. The essays in this collection explore Orwell’s important legacy: as a practising activist journalist critical of the dominant media; as a polemicist, essayist and novelist constantly concerned with issues relating to war and peace; as a literary journalist determined to make ‘political writing an art’; and as a writer who warned of the growing powers of the secret state. Through this highly individualistic essay collection that connects Orwellian themes to modern journalism, Richard Lance Keeble explores key topics, including:

Orwell the ‘proto-blogger’

How Orwell put his political economy critique of the corporate press into practice

Information warfare in an age of hyper-militarism

The manufacture of the myth of heroic warfare in the reporting of the Afghan conflict

The debates over the theory and practice of peace journalism

The ethical challenges for journalists reporting on conflict

The crucial role of the alternative media

The pleasures and pitfalls of the celebrity profile

This collection will be of particular interest to students and researchers in journalism studies, English literature, media, intelligence studies and international relations.