Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5909 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 408 pages

The Oldie
'Flat Earth News surprises... and shocks'

Metro
'this timely rallying call is essential reading - for those who write newspapers as well as those who read them'

Metro
`this timely rallying call is essential reading - for those who write newspapers as well as those who read them'

Customer Reviews

'Aint necessarily so...
When hacks start winding down their careers they have to consider what to do next. How about this for an idea? Write a book. The more controversial the wider the impact and the greater the profit. Nice little earner. Useful pension. Why not use a stereotypical image to confirm worst suspicions and pander to the general view that "It's the Media's fault - they is the ones what done it!" Far harder to write and publish a book defending the role of the media in modern society. Anyway. Who would want to read that? The principle is taught to trainee journalists. 'Dog bites man' isn't a story. 'Man bites dog' is. Bad news sells eh Nick?
Every day somewhere in the developled world honest journalists - and believe it or not the overwhelming majority are - are confronted by ignorance and anger and accused of being the Devil's spawn for asking questions. Abuse, physical assaults and increasing stress are all part of the daily reality of people who are - on the whole - trying to get to the truth to keep society informed and the wheels of democracy turning. Think about it. Where do you get most of your news and information? How do you know what is going on in the World and why do you care? The truth is that without the news industry the lights would be turned off.
It's far too easy to suggest that 'journalism ain't what it used to be'. Nothing in life is.
But it's insulting to suppose that all journalists today are merely processing press releases and making little effort to find the truth. The reality is they work harder than they ever have - for longer hours and meagre pay. Journalists on local newspapers would earn more selling hamburgers. But they don't. They battle on and they do society a service that, on the whole, society neither appreciates nor understands. Today the news business is under threat more than at any time in modern history. Newspapers are closing, hundreds of highly regarded journalists are being made redundant and the industry is generally in a state of depression. There is widespread uncertainty about the future and few young journalists fresh out of the media colleges will have any hope of a career.
By all means 'have a go'. But think about it. In this case. Who really stands to profit?

Invaluable
A copy of this book should be put in the hands of every man, woman, child, cat and dog on the planet. We are being drowned in a sea of rolling news, breaking news, 'keeping you updated', etc etc - and it's all crap. Many of us knew the news has been distorted for years, but as Nick Davies proves the modern media can now only produce hogwash (actually, that's an insult to hogwash). At a time when we need a proper Fourth Estate we get junk. There are faults with the book: it's probably overlong and the author mentions only in passing that PR is full of journalists, most of whom would work for whoever pays them and say what they're paid to. But enough of that. That modern news is hype, hysteria and hopeless is proved beyond doubt in page after page of Davies' breathtaking catalogue of examples.

Potentially important book, but fatally flawed
The cover of this book is splattered with quotes saying how important this book is, and they're sort of right. Davies looks with a piercing insiders eye at why the news reported to us -- even from "heavyweight" sources -- is even less dependable than even cynics think. The book clearly shows how commercial factors have all but eliminated any checking of stories, so the media are almost completely at the mercy of PR generated by vested interests.

The problem -- and it's a big one -- is that the book risks being tarred with the same brush (because of carelessness, I hope, and not because Davies sources really are poor). Davies repeatedly quotes the figure of only 12% original input from newsrooms, but only once mentions that there's another 8% that's uncertain so the actual figure is somewhere betweeen 12% and 20%. Responsible reporting would say 16% +/- 4%, or just 16%; by choosing the worst extreme of the range Davies is sensationalising the data. Even worse, the figure of 12% comes from a single study, and no reference is given for the study, so readers cannot check the data. What was the methodology? Was the study ever peer reviewed? In fact, no references are given for anything at all; we have to take Davies' word for everything he says. That's the very thing he complains about journalists doing, the very thing that leads to flat-earth journalism, the very problem he is trying to highlight. Sure, some of his sources would want to remain anonymous, but the total lack of any references at all in a book of this type is completely unforgiveable. And does he have a vested interest? Well, he's a journalist, complaining about massive cuts in employment of journalism, massive cuts in journalists' pay, and massive deterioration in journalists' working conditions: it looks like a vested interest to me (and he admits in part to this at the outset).

If we take the message of this book at all seriously then we can't trust this book at all. That's a real pity, because I think it deals with crucially important issues and Davies may well actually be correct in his allegations. It may just have been a foolish decision -- not to reference anything -- that holed this book beneath the waterline. But with that flaw, the book is sunk.