Rattrap
Doesn't feed trolls and would appreciate it if you
I've recently decided that I'd become a more active reader. Not that I'd read more, but that I'd do more follow-up on the books that I read - specifically, the non-fiction stuff. I frequently enjoy books about how the world is, usually about how the status quo came to be or how the status quo clearly isn't right.
As such, I'm sharing with you thoughts on a recent read, Nick Davies' Flat Earth News. This book is, in essence, an exposé on how much news media fails to give us actual information. I'm not talking just about spin or bias, but sometimes straight made-up stories, or blatant propaganda. Davies being a British journalist, the book focuses mostly on British journalism, but it's clear these issues take place pretty much everywhere corporations own news outlets.
Some telling quotes:
'I commissioned specialist researchers from the journalism department of Cardiff University to investigate a sample of the stories running through the British media. I asked them to focus only on the most prestigious and serious media outlets in the country...(The Times, the Guardian, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph) and the Daily Mail...
They chose two random weeks and analysed every single domestic news story put out by those outlets, a total of 2,207 pieces...Where there was any doubt about the origin of stories, they interviewed reporters from the different newspapers and then tracked backwards to find their source material.
At the end of this unique investigation, they came up with a striking finding - that the most respected media outlets in the country are routinely recycling unchecked second-hand material...
They found that a massive 60% of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material, and a further 20% contained clear elements of wire copy and/or PR to which more or less other material had been added. With 8% of the stories, they were unable to be sure about their source. That left only 12% of stories where researchers could say that all the material was generated by the reporters themselves.' (p.52)
'...only 1% of wire stories which were carried by Fleet Street papers admitted the source. Most carried misleading bylines, "by a staff reporter" or even by a named reporter who had rewritten the agency copy...As the Cardiff report put it: "We found many stories apparently written by one of the newspaper's own reporters that seem to have been cut and pasted from elsewhere."'
'The researchers went on to look at those stories which relied on a specific statement of fact and found that with a staggering 70% of them, the claimed fact ****** into print without any corroboration at all. Only 12% of these stories showed evidence that the central statement had been thoroughly checked.
And these are conservative figures. They left out the tabloids...' (p. 53)
The book continues with many specific examples, the last few chapters of which are specifically dedicated to pointing out falsehoods/tactics used by some of the leading British newspapers. Rupert Murdoch comes up, of course, in the discussion of the corporate takeover of the news media (which is the primary reason for the failure of the news, according to Davies).
It's certainly made me think - can I trust anything written in the news? You can't trust collaboration on story, as papers frequently get their stories from other papers. The other media (TV, radio, etc.) simply follows print, which was also mentioned in Bernard Goldberg's Bias (another book about news media, though with a different focus). And if we can't trust the news, where the hell do we get our information about the world from, then?
I guess you can ask: is it plausible? Is it serving someone's political agenda? Commercial agenda? It may even be that everything reported is entirely true, but the simple fact it is reported instead of something else fits into somebody's agenda. PR is everywhere.
Just as I question the news, I questioned this book by checking the reactions to it. You can find some of them here (as well as longer, more involved reviews than I've provided):
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With these along with what else I could find, nobody refutes Davies' central claims. Critics point to the number of good reporters and good journalism that still exist (as does Davies in the book), but then, how are we to distinguish?
Thoughts?
As such, I'm sharing with you thoughts on a recent read, Nick Davies' Flat Earth News. This book is, in essence, an exposé on how much news media fails to give us actual information. I'm not talking just about spin or bias, but sometimes straight made-up stories, or blatant propaganda. Davies being a British journalist, the book focuses mostly on British journalism, but it's clear these issues take place pretty much everywhere corporations own news outlets.
Some telling quotes:
'I commissioned specialist researchers from the journalism department of Cardiff University to investigate a sample of the stories running through the British media. I asked them to focus only on the most prestigious and serious media outlets in the country...(The Times, the Guardian, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph) and the Daily Mail...
They chose two random weeks and analysed every single domestic news story put out by those outlets, a total of 2,207 pieces...Where there was any doubt about the origin of stories, they interviewed reporters from the different newspapers and then tracked backwards to find their source material.
At the end of this unique investigation, they came up with a striking finding - that the most respected media outlets in the country are routinely recycling unchecked second-hand material...
They found that a massive 60% of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material, and a further 20% contained clear elements of wire copy and/or PR to which more or less other material had been added. With 8% of the stories, they were unable to be sure about their source. That left only 12% of stories where researchers could say that all the material was generated by the reporters themselves.' (p.52)
'...only 1% of wire stories which were carried by Fleet Street papers admitted the source. Most carried misleading bylines, "by a staff reporter" or even by a named reporter who had rewritten the agency copy...As the Cardiff report put it: "We found many stories apparently written by one of the newspaper's own reporters that seem to have been cut and pasted from elsewhere."'
'The researchers went on to look at those stories which relied on a specific statement of fact and found that with a staggering 70% of them, the claimed fact ****** into print without any corroboration at all. Only 12% of these stories showed evidence that the central statement had been thoroughly checked.
And these are conservative figures. They left out the tabloids...' (p. 53)
The book continues with many specific examples, the last few chapters of which are specifically dedicated to pointing out falsehoods/tactics used by some of the leading British newspapers. Rupert Murdoch comes up, of course, in the discussion of the corporate takeover of the news media (which is the primary reason for the failure of the news, according to Davies).
It's certainly made me think - can I trust anything written in the news? You can't trust collaboration on story, as papers frequently get their stories from other papers. The other media (TV, radio, etc.) simply follows print, which was also mentioned in Bernard Goldberg's Bias (another book about news media, though with a different focus). And if we can't trust the news, where the hell do we get our information about the world from, then?
I guess you can ask: is it plausible? Is it serving someone's political agenda? Commercial agenda? It may even be that everything reported is entirely true, but the simple fact it is reported instead of something else fits into somebody's agenda. PR is everywhere.
Just as I question the news, I questioned this book by checking the reactions to it. You can find some of them here (as well as longer, more involved reviews than I've provided):
Premium Link Upgrade
Premium Link Upgrade
With these along with what else I could find, nobody refutes Davies' central claims. Critics point to the number of good reporters and good journalism that still exist (as does Davies in the book), but then, how are we to distinguish?
Thoughts?
