Flat Earth News: Modern Journalism And The Half-Truth

NICK Davies book FLAT EARTH NEWS is a critique of modern journalism. He says:

I argue that part of the reason why journalists so frequently fail to tell the truth is simply that they are not given the time to find it. And before I have time to say “Told you so”, I find myself confronted on the BBC’s Today programme by two senior Fleet figures who insist that I am wrong, even though one of them, John Mullin from the Independent on Sunday, admitted he had read only half of the book; and the other, Stewart Kuttner from the News of the World, appeared to have read not a word.

It’s churnalism. But is it anything new?

Davies has chiefly confined his study to upmarket papers because “nobody needs a book to tell them that tabloids are an unreliable source of information about the world”.

Are they? Who has time to read a broadsheet cover to cover? A tabloid has the news in an instant. You want more, you can now easily reseach it yourself online.

Indeed, the tabloids often have the news first. It where the broadsheets - the author wrote for the Guardian - often get their ideas from…

Anorak

Posted: 11th, February 2008 | In: Anorak In New York Comments (3) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink