Breaking the News exhibition opens

Cardiff University Senior Lecturer Dr David Dunkley Gyimah has contributed his media expertise to a new exhibition in the British Library called Breaking the News.

The exhibition, which opened on 22 April, documents 500 years of news coverage in the UK, the power and influence of that coverage and asks what really lies behind the headlines?

The British Library’s own collection of broadsheets, blogs and cataloged objects are used to illustrate five centuries of era-defining stories close-up. From reporting on Jack the Ripper to the Profumo Affair, and from coverage of the Grenfell Tower fire to the war in Syria.

As a member of the advisory panel, Dr Dunkley Gyimah contributed his specialist knowledge of international journalism, diversity, innovation and cinema journalism to the stories selected by the panel for the exhibition.

Dr Dunkley Gyimah said, “News has the power to make and break elections. Turn everyday people into overnight superstars. And bring them crashing back down to earth.

Dr Dunkley Gyimah also contributed a chapter called Black Lives Matter: The fight for identity in the media, to the book accompanying the exhibition.

In it he argues it is impossible to understand the Black Lives Matter movement and its media representation without understanding the power of language, the history of the civil rights, the use of slogans in Black empowerment, and the lens in which mainstream news operates.