Wobblechops: How Entertainment Broke the News

by James Matthewson

We live in an age when news, politics and current affairs are no longer confined to newspapers or the evening news. They are now everywhere – our phones, our TVs and our social media. The measured voices of traditional political punditry have been replaced by a relentless stream of hot takes, outrage, opinion and content engineered for clicks, shares and views.

Wobblechops takes readers behind the scenes of this rapidly changing world to explore the rise of opinion-driven media. Told through the eyes of political commentator James Matthewson, this book draws on a career at the heart of the maelstrom that modern broadcasting has become – from heated debates with government ministers and extraordinary newsroom rivalries to explosive confrontations and even becoming the target of a terrorist group. Along the way, Matthewson witnesses how an industry built to inform has become increasingly driven by the demands of profit-driven infotainment.

As the media mutates into something faster, louder and harder to recognise, Wobblechops asks the troubling what are we sacrificing at the altar of entertainment and what happens when the spectacle becomes more important than the truth?

Kindle Edition

Expected publication May 20, 2027