Upcoming Events

THINK TANKS AND THE MEDIA
Problem solvers?... or hidden persuaders?

National newspapers and broadcasters are often telling us about research from 'think-tanks' - all kinds of 'Institutes' and 'Centres', that most of us don’t know anything about.

They sound academic: 'The Institute of Economic Affairs', 'The Institute for Public Policy Research', 'The Centre for Policy Studies' - as if they were off-shoots of major universities. And major problem solvers..

Their spokespeople can have rather academic titles. Sometimes you’ll see or hear them on the TV or radio, introduced as from the free-market think tank X, or the left-leaning think tank Y.

But what does that actually mean?

Who are they?

We know that they get lots of “hits” in media for their reports, their ideas and their spokespeople.

Some argue that think tanks provide an important role in carrying out policy research. But they can be surprisingly secretive about their funding, political sympathies, and alliances. This leads some critics to call them “hidden persuaders”

See Event trailer

Our Chair for the evening

Lionel Barber: Journalist and former editor of the Financial Times

Our Expert Panel features:

Polly Mackenzie: Chief Executive of Demos, the cross-party think tank.

Robert Colvile:
Director of the Centre of Policy Studies, (CPS), the free market think tank.

Peter Geoghegan:
Author, journalist and investigations editor at Open Democracy.

Andrew Rowell:
University of Bath, co-founder of Spin Watch and co author of  ‘A Quiet Word : Lobbying, crony-capitalism and broken politics in Britain."

TICKETS

Please note: 
Entry tickets are  £10 each which helps cover our costs.
We will be making a number of free tickets available for students and anyone currently un-waged.

The Media Society is a volunteer run Charity committed to open access for all our Media themed  events.
 
ZOOM waiting room open at 5.45pm.
Conversation starts at 6.00pm prompt.