James Ball

James Ball is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and author, fellow of the think-tank Demos, and the political editor of The New European.

He has worked as the global editor of TBIJ, a special correspondent at BuzzFeed UK and special projects editor at The Guardian, where he played a key role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the NSA leaks by Edward Snowden, as well as the offshore leaks, HSBC Files, Reading the Riots and Keep it in the Ground projects. At WikiLeaks he was closely involved in Cablegate – the publication of 250,000 classified US embassy cables in 2010 – as well as working on two documentaries based on the Iraq War Logs.

James’ journalism has been published in major outlets across the world, including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, WIRED, The i paper, The Spectator, The New Statesman, The Telegraph, The Daily Beast and many others. He has a following of 80,000+ on X and 45,000+ on Bluesky.

James’ podcast, The New Conspiracist, ran for three series and charted top five on iTunes, achieving more than 500,000 downloads total. He was a featured subject of the acclaimed Alex Gibney documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks and has extensive broadcast experience.

James is the author of multiple books, including Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered The World and The System: Who Owns The Internet And How It Owns Us. His most recent book, The Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated The World, was published by Bloomsbury in July 2023.

New book to be announced.

Praise for The Other Pandemic:

“Utterly fascinating” -- Dom Joly

“A disturbing study of the origins and resilience of an exceptionally versatile and pernicious network of paranoid digital malcontents.” -- Rafael Behr ― The Guardian

“Brilliant, wide-ranging. The Other Pandemic presents a detailed and disturbing diagnosis.” ― Spectator

Praise for The System:

“Nimble and persuasive … refreshing and necessary” – New York Times

“A sprightly history of the internet seen from the perspective of its inventors, investors, custodians, rule-makers and rebels” ― Financial Times

“Ball is a sprightly writer and a master explainer . . . He has a gift for choosing which details to bring forth” ― The Spectator

“An excellent summary of how we got where we are, and how we can move forwards to build a better internet” – Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

Praise for Post-Truth:

Kazuo Ishiguro acclaims "James Ball's Post Truth for its vivid analysis of how the business models and incentives currently prevailing in digital media render decent discourse all but inaudible." --The Guardian Summer Reads

“Disturbing, and so important” – Caroline Criado Perez

"Worth reading for [its] dissection of one of the more annoying and insistent mosquitoes of our social and media lives." – Financial Times

"A crisp, highly informative introduction to what ails the information industry and what can be done about it … Ball's analysis of where the media have gone wrong is thorough and courageously even-handed" – The Times

"A timely and important book by one of the smartest of the new generation of journalists and thinkers." -- Alan Rusbridger, former Guardian editor-in-chief