Nicholas Jones

Nicholas Jones is an author and political commentator. He was a BBC industrial and political correspondent for thirty years and has written extensively on the relationship between politicians and the news media. Jones is a regular commentator to debates on issues concerning politics and the media and he takes a close interest in issues affecting the standards and practice of journalism.

Jones began his career as a journalist in 1960, and after working on local evening newspapers in Portsmouth and Oxford, he became a parliamentary and political reporter for The Times in 1968 and joined the BBC in 1972, as a news producer at Radio Leicester and was later a national radio reporter, before being promoted to correspondent.
In 1986 Jones was named Industrial Reporter of the Year by the Industrial Society for his reporting of the 1984-85 miners’ strike for BBC Radio News. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Wolverhampton in 2005 and appointed an honorary visiting professor at the Cardiff School of Journalism in 2011.

His books include Strikes and the Media (1986), Soundbites and Spin Doctors (1995), Sultans of Spin (1999), Trading Information: Leaks, Lies and Tip-offs (2006) and The Lost Tribe: Whatever Happened to Fleet Street’s Industrial Correspondents (2011). His four books on general elections: Election 92, Campaign 1997, Campaign 2001 and Campaign 2010: The Making of the Prime Minister.

He has contributed chapters to a range of recent books including Pulling Newspapers Apart (2008), Broadcast Journalism (2009), The Phone Hacking Scandal (2012), What Do We Mean By Local (2013), Is The BBC In Crisis (2014), Freedom of Information 10 Years On (2015), and chapters for books on the miners’ strike, Shafted (2009) and Settling Scores (2014).