The Truth & Lies issue: February/March 2020

Featuring three specially designed covers by Jimmy Turrell, the latest issue of CR takes a look at how truth and lies are influencing our lives and the creative work that we make, from storytelling in the post-truth era to fact-checking in the age of fake news

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Fake news, misinformation, deepfakes: these expressions have come to symbolise some of the challenges that we all face in navigating the world as we find it at the start of a new decade.

The creative industries are by no means exempt from our current obsession with truth and lies and, in light of this, we’ve decided to tackle these topics directly in our new issue, which features not one, but three alternative covers created by artist Jimmy Turrell.

First up is an interview with playwright James Graham, who is arguably the man that first brought the now-notorious political strategist (and mastermind behind the Vote Leave campaign) Dominic Cummings into the public spotlight, via his drama Brexit: The Uncivil War. Graham talks about the importance of using storytelling to understand complex contemporary events.

We look at the news industry, speaking to fact-checkers for organisations such as the New Yorker and Channel 4 News about how their job has become increasingly vital in recent years, and examining the rise of ‘trust us’ advertising for news media outlets including the Guardian and the New York Times.

Elsewhere, Craig Oldham busts some enduring myths about the creative industries, including the idea that you need to suffer for your art, while data designer and Pentagram partner Giorgia Lupi explains how data can be one of our greatest storytellers, so long as it’s handled thoughtfully. And 20 years on from the launch of Big Brother in the UK, we delve into how the reality TV genre has changed the shape of telly over the past two decades.

Plus, as usual we have lots of opinion pieces, including CR’s resident agony aunt Anna Higgs on how to tackle the age-old dilemma of asking for a raise, and designer Aries Moross, director Max Siedentopf and former head of 4Creative Alice Tonge share their thoughts on how to deal with a crisis of confidence.

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