Jean Seaton

Jean Seaton is a Media History Professor and the BBC's Official Historian. In 2017, Profile Books published an updated edition of her volume on the history of the Corporation, entitled Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation 1974-1987. The book covers everything the BBC did in a tumultuous decade, ranging from the Troubles 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, programs for children and a tense and complicated relationship with the government. 

The history was given privileged access to BBC archives and state papers and also depended on several hundred interviews. It explored both the program-making decisions that go into making an iconic television series like John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and the high politics around the imposition of the broadcasting ban. She has been involved in various policy discussions within the BBC because of her understanding of the historical precedent and shape of concerns. 

She has also assisted program makers in formulating problems more accurately and appearing on programs as an expert witness. Her chapters in John Mair’s edited collections, published in 2020 by Bite-Sized Books, use her expertise on the BBC’s history to make arguments about its present and future. In 2019, her book Power Without Responsibility: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain (co-authored with James Curran) won the International Communication Association’s Fellows Book Award for the book that has most influenced the discipline. 

The 8th edition of this classic text was published by Routledge in the previous year, containing new research on the international role of the British media, social media, and the relationship between programs, institutions, and society. It has become a standard book on media and other courses and has been translated into many other languages (including Chinese, Portuguese and Arabic). The book continues to aim to change the media and describe them.

Since 2007, she has served as Director of the Orwell Foundation, succeeding Sir Bernard Crick. The Orwell Prizes, awarded annually, have become Britain's premier prizes for political writing, setting standards and holding journalism to account, and celebrating good journalism and writing. Under her stewardship, they have become a well-known and respected force in journalism. In 2014, it launched an Orwell Youth Prize, designed to encourage literary and political engagement among the young. It runs a successful series of annual lectures given by eminent public figures, including Tristram Hunt, Daniel Finkelstein, Rowan Williams, and Hilary Mantel.

Professor Rosie Thomas created and ran the FCDO Chevening South Asian Journalists Programme. This pioneered bringing high-flying journalists from across contested borders in South Asia together in the UK for an immersive experience of UK media, culture, politics, society, and issues. It has been replicated in the new African FCDO program also run at Westminster.

She has also written widely on the history and role of the media in politics, wars, atrocities, the Holocaust, revolutions, security issues, and religion, as well as news and journalism, and is particularly interested in the impact of the media on children. She has contributed to policy debates and formulation especially concerning public service content and freedom of speech.

Her Carnage and the Media: the Making and Breaking of News about Violence (Penguin, 2005) gives a perhaps unexpected account of sensation in the reporting of news about violence and audience reactions to it. While examining the destructive power of contemporary media in attack mode, it also shows how news paints stories in emotions and argues for the values of stoic fortitude. It demonstrates how news provides us with contemporary ceremonies and also contains a pictorial essay examining many iconic images and their role in the news.