Actor, comedian and host of The News Quiz Miles Jupp and radio news presenter Kathy Clugston are to appear in a Radio 3 programme reading poetry and prose about the news media and journalism, with music and archive clips.

Readings include extracts from the autobiographies of Andrew Marr and Barry Norman, poems by T.S. Eliot, Siegfried Sassoon, George Crabbe, Carol Ann Duffy and Wendy Cope, and novels by Evelyn Waugh, Michael Frayn and Anthony Trollope. Music includes works by Malcolm Arnold, Janáček, Philip Glass, John Adams, Johann Strauss II, Django Bates and Erollyn Wallen. There are also some familiar news themes and key archive clips from across the ages.

News consumption in the age of the internet is something we now take for granted, and discerning which is truth and which is "fake" is a daily challenge for all of us. Yet this is nothing new. From the age of the Town Crier, through the early days of printed newspapers and the black and white Pathé News reels shown in cinemas, to half-hourly new bulletins with reports from correspondents "embedded" in the midst of international conflicts, and 24-hour rolling news on global TV channels, we are constantly being bombarded with updates of events and opinions from all over the planet. Newsreaders have become household names, and reporters are the heroes and villains of our time. The news media industry has long fascinated writers and poets, and much has been written about it over the centuries, from romantic notions of newspapers reflecting the moral compass of a nation, to sarcastic, nihilistic cynicism about prurient intrusion and political propaganda.

Words and Music: The News goes out on BBC Radio 3 on Sunday, July 15 at 5.30pm.