Nick Davies - Flat Earth News: An Award-Winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media

Contents

About the Book

When award-winning journalist Nick Davies decided to break Fleet Streets unwritten rule and investigate his own colleagues, he found that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance. Working with a network of sources, Davies uncovered a whole range of corruption from CIA-planted fiction to the newsroom that routinely rejects stories about black people, from bent detectives to cash bribes. Davies names names and exposes the national stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry, and examines the impact of a corrupted profession on a world where consumers believe a mass of stories which, in fact, are as false as the idea that the world is flat.

About the Author

Nick Davies writes investigative stories for the Guardian , and has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year in the British press awards. Apart from his work on newspapers, he also makes television documentaries and he has written four books, including White Lies , which uncovered a racist miscarriage of justice in Texas; Murder on Ward Four , which examined the collapse of the NHS through the murder of children by Nurse Beverly Allitt; and Dark Heart , a journey through the wasteland of British poverty. He has three children and lives in Sussex.

ALSO BY NICK DAVIES

Dark Heart:

The Shocking Truth about Hidden Britain

White Lies: The True Story of Clarence Brandley,

Presumed Guilty in the American South

Murder on Ward Four: The Story of Bev Allitt

and the Most Terrifying Crime Since

the Moors Murders

The School Report: Why Britains Schools

are Failing

Nick Davies has amassed an overwhelming weight of evidence that the British media lies, distorts facts and routinely breaks the law. It is hypnotically readable, commands attention right to the end and has troubled me profoundly ever since... His book should be read by every reporter, editor and proprietor as well as newspaper readers. Its real importance goes far beyond journalism

Peter Oborne, The Spectator

This brilliant book by Nick Davies, unrelenting in its research, ruthless in its honesty, is a landmark expos by a courageous insider. All those interested in truth outsiders and insiders should read it

John Pilger

Nick Daviess Flat Earth News is a genuinely important book, one which is likely to change, permanently, the way anyone who reads it looks at the British newspaper industry... His portrait of the British media could scarcely be any darker, or more convincing.

John Lanchester, London Review of Books

What he reveals about the news media is so damaging that it must shock anyone who isnt involved in journalism as well as many who are... His chapters The Private Life of Public Relations and The Propaganda Puzzle should be read by all journalists and those who want to be journalists so that they are fully aware of the strength and cunning of the forces ranged against them

Jenny McKay, Lecturer in Journalism at University of Stirling, Journalism Studies

In my opinion Flat Earth News should be compulsory reading for everyone in our field

Richard Linning, Fellow Chartered Institute of Public

Relations, for the International Public Relations Association

Davies, a journalist of 30 years standing openly flouts the unwritten rule that in Fleet Street dog doesnt eat dog

Paul Riddell, The Scotsman

Written by an insider who really does know what goes on inside newsrooms

Tim Luckhurst, Independent on Sunday

He speaks feelingly of the mass-production of ignorance and goes on to name so many of his former media colleagues in a disobliging context that, if hes a wise man, he wont go out after dark for a long, long time

David Leigh, Investigations Editor of Guardian ,

British Journalism Review

A wonderfully written tour de force which confirms many of our worst fears about the conduct of 21st century journalism... A cri de coeur from someone within the system who can see that the system is broke and that the currency of public life accurate, unprejudiced information about what is happening in the world around us is being systematically corrupted

Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications at University of Westminster, Political Quarterly

A devastating critique of the ills of British journalism

Nicholas Jones, former BBC political correspondent, Spinwatch

The valiant-for-truth writers and broadcasters whom I most admire have united in applauding Daviess work... Shamefully (but understandably) the book was largely ignored by the national newspapers it attacks

Christopher Gray, Oxford Times

A remarkable book that relentlessly gives example after example of lies, distortion, of propaganda posing as news, of important stories simply not covered, of pseudo events dreamt up by PR people... Maybe, if read by enough journalists, Flat Earth News might act as a wake-up call

Irish Times

Important and depressing

Andrew Gilligan, Evening Standard

Davies has taken on a powerful and ruthless establishment

David Crouch, Media Workers Against War

A mess

Peter Preston, former editor of the Guardian

Rubbish

Simon Jenkins, former editor of The Times

FOR ROBIN, PEGGY AND JOE

FLAT EARTH NEWS

An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media

Nick Davies

Prologue

Dog doesnt eat dog. Thats always been the rule in Fleet Street. We dig into the world of politics and finance and sport and policing and entertainment. We dig wherever we like but not in our own back garden. In the last fifteen years, we have at least started running media pages, but the truth is that they are there primarily to attract advertisements; they dont usually put the spade in too deep.

There was a neat illustration of this while I was working on this book. In January 2007, the Daily Telegraph was caught out badly after its Washington correspondent, Toby Harnden, filed a story anticipating the hanging of Saddam Hussein, confidently predicting details of the dictators impending death. During the night, the execution took place, and some unknown hand at the Telegraph rewrote some of Harndens copy into the past tense, thus converting speculation into reportage. Within days, a leaked video of the execution revealed that some of Harndens predictions had turned out to be wrong. Harnden openly explained what had happened on his blog. However, his bosses at the Telegraph didnt like that and deleted his posting, warning staff to think carefully before blogging about journalistic tricks of the trade. There you have it: speculation dressed up as truth is nothing worse than a trick of the trade; and well have no real reporting about reporting.

This book is a brazen attempt to break that rule.

It started with a single, notorious story the long and twisting saga of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. As the sand settled after the invasion in March 2003 and the weaponless reality slowly began to emerge, journalists across the world finally started looking for the truth and yet almost all of them wrote about it as though this were a screw-up generated only by intelligence agencies and governments, invariably failing to expose their own professions global contribution.

But this isnt a book about WMD. Its about everything I found when I started trying to explain how we had managed to do so badly in covering what is probably the biggest single story of our era. The more I looked, the more I found falsehood, distortion and propaganda running through the outlets of an industry which is supposed to be dedicated to the very opposite, i.e. to telling the truth. The more I searched for an explanation, the more alarmed I became by the scale of the problem and by the complexity of its causes. By the time I had finished, I looked back in embarrassment at my own naivety.