What Can Be Done? makes an important contribution to public debate in Britain about the relationship between the media and politics, focusing in particular on the damage the media do to politics and the controls that politicians impose on the media.
The book comprises a series of challenging essays written by academics, journalists and political commentators, each one proposing reforms that could improve how the media perform and how politics functions. Addressing topical issues such as regulation, public service broadcasting, and how news is managed, these contributions recommend some key changes that would improve democracy in Britain by improving the quality of public debate. The focus of the book is on Britain, but key commentators from America and Europe put the British problems into perspective.