Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1216 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
`Provides a fascinating and vital attack on media distortion and ignorance' --Financial Times

Review
`an idealistic search for truth that needs defending'

Review
`as a read, it's bracing it's moreish and you'll tear through it'

Customer Reviews

Why are Newspapers so Cheap?
I brought this book after reading a few snippets in Private Eye. All I can say is that Nick Davis has written a fascinating insight into the journalism business in the UK. By writing a truly insightful book with an abundance of hard facts, Davis answers the question indirectly as to why newspapers are so cheap in the UK. The Sun can be purchased for 20p these days; I wonder why? Davis not only addresses why the UK media is so distorted; but how.

As he mentions in the chapter `The Private Life of Public Relation', PR firms inject falsehood into the British media so surreptitiously which the weekly columnists are completely oblivious to. For instance, he cites the case of the Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips who wrote "a series of outspoken columns denouncing the whole concept of man-made climate change". Davis goes on to mention one of her articles in the Mail in February 2002 which said `The latest evidence is provided in a report published today by the European Science and Environmental Forum, in which a group of the most eminent scientists from Britain and America shed the theory'. Fair play to Phillips for doing her research, but was it researched enough? Davis gives us the pleasure of looking deeper into the roots of the story and writes "the forum whose work she {Phillips} was quoting was, in truth, yet another pseudo-group, created with the help of two PR agencies (APCO Worldwide and Burson-Marsteller) with the specific intent of campaigning against restrictions on corporate activity". He also mentions how the report "Phillips referred in such glowing terms was recycled work which had been funded by Exxon".

This is just one of many fascinating examples on how the minds of ordinary British folk are distorted so unnoticeably that many people regard what they read as the truth. And its not just the tabloids. Davis cites many examples from the likes of the Times to the Guardian that have been proven guilty of misleading their readers on a mass scale. If there is one book I could recommend anyone it would be this. I have been reading papers for some time now, and this book will completely change the way you read and look at things. It can even be quite fun reading the papers and trying to pick out stories that have been influenced by PR; it's amusing to make a game out of it.

Overall I would give this book 5 stars for its plethora of research (although backpage references would have been nice) and insights that can prove beneficial to anybody who likes to be informed.

Brave Man
Nick Davies must be a brave man... He has launched a devastating attack on not only the state of modern journalism, but also on the basic integrity of many of those involved in the profession. And this from a major paper journalist who must now have made a lot of enemies within his industry.

I'm sure you have noticed how very similar versions of the same stories are posted online by apparently independent and well funded news organisations - especially in America for news outside the US. This book explains why, and how the facts of these clone stories are often unchecked by the trusted organisations putting them into the public domain.

The book also covers the pernicious effects and influence of PR and also, perhaps most depressingly, the outright lying of major newspapers who are left barely challenged by the Press Complaints Commission and whom average people cannot afford to defend themselves against.

All of it seems to root back to money. Selling more papers through sensationalism, pandering to racism and lying; cost cutting exercises that have reduced the number of journalists available to cover an ever increasing number of stories, leaving them without the time to check their sources properly.

Very depressing, but a fantastic inoculation against the effects of this 'disease'. The book will help you take a more critical view of what you read, see and hear and understand the motivations that lie behind much of the news we are fed. The final summary provides some ideas about where good journalism can still be found - basically it exists where advertising does not - or where reporting is guided (or protected) by highly ethical 'old school' editorial policies.

Who stole our journalism?
The answer to that question and many others you didn't think you needed to know are all in this fantastic book. It is both illumintaing and at the same time depressing to realise that even the most trusted brands of journalism have become victim, like so much of our media, to the forces of money-making, fast-turnaround and nonsense PR. This book is an startling education for anyone who reads or watches 'news', not just those connected to the industry.