THE former BBC correspondent Martin Bell is on the warpath. News reporting is dying. So the Man in the White Suit will tell the Wigtown Book Festival next week, where he will be joined by a number of esteemed former colleagues including Jeremy Bowen, Bridget Kendall and Angus Roxburgh.

Broadly, Bell argues that the cultural shifts in reporting — from newsroom cuts to clickbait — are dumbing down our view of the world. It’s an argument I hear lots in my role running news programming for America’s National Public Radio (NPR), and it’s hard not to be discouraged sometimes by the many kinds of crazy that masquerade for news today.

But, despite that, the outlook is not all bad. Indeed, the glass may be more than half full. If we can only escape our profession’s terminal pessimism, serious journalism could be on the verge of a new golden age.

If the growth of “fake news” has shown us anything, it’s that facts matter. Demand for accurate information has never been greater. Our own organisation is enjoying record growth, something that seemed inconceivable a couple of years ago. For those unfamiliar with NPR, we are the nearest thing in the US to the BBC. A public service broadcaster with 263 member stations, providing a mixture of local, national and international news.

For the first time, NPR’s two daily news programs — equivalents of Radio’s 4’s Today and PM — are the number one and number two news/talk radio shows in the US, besting the likes of conservative favourites Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. We have accomplished that not with the radio equivalent of cat videos, but by doubling-down on coverage of the Trump Administration, Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The role “fake news” may have played in the Presidential election, has led to much-needed soul-searching in America’s newsrooms. For the most part, the right lessons are being learnt. Double down on uncovering the truth. Don’t let lies stand. Organisations are investing in more robust fact-checking and putting a new emphasis on investigative reporting. Competition is increasingly fierce to hire dogged and well-sourced reporters, not just pretty faces for TV.

Here in the US, one of the great journalism battles of our time is playing out, as the New York Times and Washington Post vie to out scoop each other daily with extraordinary stories about the Trump Administration. In particular, the Washington Post — the paper that uncovered Watergate — has been revitalised under new ownership. Who is that owner? Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who has helped the paper find a winning mix of old-fashioned shoe leather reporting and digital savvy.

New technology has opened up new audiences and old media is getting better at reaching them. Take podcasting. Once the place for whispered tales of the individual ego run rampant, it is now a robust platform for deeply reported, risk-taking journalism.

This year, NPR launched a short daily news podcast, Up First. It now has almost a million weekly listeners, and here is the fact that stunned us: almost half of have never listened to our traditional broadcast morning news program. The New York Times has also debuted a daily news podcast to acclaim and ratings. I’ll bet that precious few listeners were subscribers to the paper.

None of which is to dismiss Bell’s concerns. He is sharp on the fake “on-the-one-hand, on the other-hand” balance that so much serious news coverage exhibits. He is also right to raise the alarm about the decline of international reporting, especially the war reporting that made his name. It’s a subject close to home. Last year two colleagues were killed in an ambush in Helmand Province Afghanistan. David Gilkey and Zabihullah Tamanna were bearing witness to a conflict now half forgotten.

NPR maintains 17 bureaux worldwide, a rarity today. But as the hundreds of people who will go to Wigtown to hear Martin Bell and his colleagues show, the public’s desire to hear first-hand from those on the frontline of events has yet to be dimmed by the internet. As Mark Twain might have said, reports of the death of news have been greatly exaggerated.

Chris Turpin is head of news for NPR and will be taking part in an event on The End of American Influence?, with Gavin Esler, at Wigtown Book Festival on Sunday 24 September. (www.wigtownbookfestival.com)