Flat Earth News (book)

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Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
Flat Earth News (book).jpg
Author Nick Davies
CountryUnited Kingdom
GenreNon-fiction, journalism, politics
Published2008
PublisherChatto & Windus
Pages408
ISBN 978-0-7011-8145-1 0701181451
9780099512684
0099512688
OCLC 176826415
Preceded byDark Heart (1998) [1]
The School Report (2000) [2]  
Followed by Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch (2014) [3]  

Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media is a 2008 non-fiction book by Nick Davies in which he investigating malpractice on Fleet Street. [4] The Flat Earth News is considered to be the sister book to Davies' 2014 publication, Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch . [3]

Contents

Background

In Flat Earth News, Davies, who has been a journalist since the 1970s, [5] undertook an analysis of daily news media in the United Kingdom from the 1980s to 2008. [4] From funding raised through the Rowntree Foundation, Davies commissioned a Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies research project led by Justin Lewis on the United Kingdom's national news coverage [6] The researchers examined the origins of 2,000 stories that had been carried by The Times , The Daily Telegraph , The Guardian , and The Independent , and in some cases− The Daily Mail . [6] The report found that only 12% of the stories were provably based on material that the reporters had fact-checked and investigated themselves. [6] [4] : 95  Based on the data, the research showed that "everyday practices of news judgement, fact-checking, balance, criticising and interrogating sources et cetera, that are, in theory, central to routine, day-to-day journalism" were the exception, not the rule. [6] Davies thesis is that journalists themselves are not the reason for the increase in "falsehood, distortion and propaganda"—the problem is structural. Corporations, that operate under a logic of commercialism, have taken over newsrooms. [5] Citing Rupert Murdoch—the founder and CEO of News Corp, as an example, Davies says that under the corporate model, there are fewer journalists working at newspapers and they have increased workloads. [5] Journalists require time to make contacts, find new stories, and fact-check. Under time pressure they resort to recycling press releases and wire news, often without fact-checking.

Reviews

A 6 March 2008 London Review of Books said that Flat Earth News was "a genuinely important book, one which is likely to change, permanently, the way anyone who reads it looks at the British newspaper industry". [7]

Mary Riddell in The Observer said that "Much of Davies's analysis is fair, meticulously researched and fascinating, if gloomy. [8]

Peter Oborne in The Spectator said that Nick Davies has amassed an overwhelming weight of evidence that the British media lies, distorts facts and routinely breaks the law. [9]

The Independent called it a "wide-ranging investigation of the shortcomings of the global and British media." [10]

The Press Gazette cited a number of reviews—including those that were quite critical of the book. [11]

The British journalist, who was criticized in Davies book—Kamal Ahmed−published a response in the Observer on 11 February 2008. [12] Davies said that Ahmed had worked with Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's "spin doctor" and had become a "mouthpiece" for the Blair government, which included the Observer "backing" the Iraq war, which Ahmed denied. [11]

Press Gazette series

In 2008, Press Gazette serialised Flat Earth News "when every national newspaper – including The Guardian – declined to do so." [13] [14] Many news media outlets were critical of Davies in 2008. The Press Gazette series included references to details such as the copy of a fax that a Sunday Telegraph reporter had given Davies regarding the weapons expert, David Kelly. On the day Kelly's body was found, a private investigator had sent the Telegraph a list of every phone number Kelly had dialled in the eight weeks leading up to his untimely death. [15] [3] : 13 

Hack attack

In 2014, Davies published Hack attack: the inside story of how the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch, [3] which has been called the sister book to Flat Earth News. [16]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rupert Murdoch</span> Australian-born American business magnate (born 1931)

Keith Rupert Murdoch is an Australian-born American business magnate, investor, and media proprietor. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including in the UK, in Australia, in the US, book publisher HarperCollins, and the television broadcasting channels Sky News Australia and Fox News. He was also the owner of Sky, 21st Century Fox, and the now-defunct News of the World. With a net worth of US$21.7 billion as of 2 March 2022, Murdoch is the 31st richest person in the United States and the 71st richest in the world according to Forbes magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of British newspapers</span> Dates to the 17th century

The history of British newspapers begins in the 17th century with the emergence of regular publications covering news and gossip. The relaxation of government censorship in the late 17th century led to a rise in publications, which in turn led to an increase in regulation throughout the 18th century. The Times began publication in 1785 and became the leading newspaper of the early 19th century, before the lifting of taxes on newspapers and technological innovations led to a boom in newspaper publishing in the late 19th century. Mass education and increasing affluence led to new papers such as the Daily Mail emerging at the end of the 19th century, aimed at lower middle-class readers.

<i>News of the World</i> 1843–2011 British tabloid newspaper

The News of the World was a weekly national "red top" tabloid newspaper published every Sunday in the United Kingdom from 1843 to 2011. It was at one time the world's highest-selling English-language newspaper, and at closure still had one of the highest English-language circulations. It was originally established as a broadsheet by John Browne Bell, who identified crime, sensation and vice as the themes that would sell most copies. The Bells sold to Henry Lascelles Carr in 1891; in 1969, it was bought from the Carrs by Rupert Murdoch's media firm News Limited. Reorganised into News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation, the newspaper was transformed into a tabloid in 1984 and became the Sunday sister paper of The Sun.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News UK</span> British newspaper publisher

News Corp UK & Ireland Limited is a British newspaper publisher, and a wholly owned subsidiary of the American mass media conglomerate News Corp. It is the current publisher of The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun newspapers; its former publications include the Today, News of the World, and The London Paper newspapers. It was established in February 1981 under the name News International plc. In June 2002, the company name was changed to News International Limited, and on 31 May 2011, to NI Group Limited, and on 26 June 2013 to News UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Murdoch</span> British media executive

James Rupert Jacob Murdoch is a British-American businessman. He is the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the former chief executive officer (CEO) of 21st Century Fox from 2015 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Lewis (journalist)</span> British media executive (born 1969)

Sir William John Lewis is a British media executive who serves as the publisher and chief executive officer of The Washington Post. He was formerly chief executive of Dow Jones & Company and publisher of The Wall Street Journal. Earlier in his career, he was known as a journalist and then editor.

The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was founded in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the Daily Mail, was first published in 1896.

Paul Michael Dacre is an English journalist and the former long-serving editor of the British tabloid the Daily Mail. He is also editor-in-chief of DMG Media, which publishes the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday, the free daily tabloid Metro, the MailOnline website, and other titles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Harding (journalist)</span> British journalist

James Paul Harding is a British journalist, and a former Director of BBC News who was in the post from August 2013 until 1 January 2018. He is the co-founder of Tortoise Media.

The Paul Foot Award is an award given for investigative or campaigning journalism, set up by The Guardian and Private Eye in memory of the journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004.

Churnalism is a pejorative term for a form of journalism in which instead of original reported news, pre-packaged material such as press releases or stories provided by news agencies are used to create articles in newspapers and other news media. Its purpose is to reduce cost by reducing original news-gathering and checking sources to counter revenue lost with the rise of Internet news and decline in advertising, with a particularly steep fall in late 2015. The origin of the word has been credited to BBC journalist Waseem Zakir. Churnalism is a portmanteau of "churn" and "journalism", referring to the perceived "churning out" of content by the press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Davies</span> Award-winning British journalist and writer (born 1953)

Nicholas Davies is a British investigative journalist, writer, and documentary maker.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">News International phone hacking scandal</span> UK Media scandal

The News International phone hacking scandal was a controversy involving the now-defunct News of the World and other British newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch. Employees of the newspaper engaged in phone hacking, police bribery, and exercising improper influence in the pursuit of stories.

Operation Motorman was a 2003 investigation by the Information Commissioner's Office into allegations of offences under the Data Protection Act by the British press.

The Chipping Norton set is a group of media, political and show-business acquaintances who have homes near the market town of Chipping Norton in Oxfordshire, England. Chipping Norton is located approximately 75 miles from London. The group gained media attention in the wake of the News International phone hacking scandal, which directly involved members of the group.

The News of the World phone hacking scandal investigations followed the revelations in 2005 of voicemail interception on behalf of News of the World. Despite wider evidence of wrongdoing, the News of the World royal phone hacking scandal appeared resolved with the 2007 conviction of the News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman and the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire, and the resignation of editor Andy Coulson. However, a series of civil legal cases and investigations by newspapers, parliament and the police ultimately saw evidence of "industrial scale" phone hacking, leading to the closure of the News of the World on 10 July 2011. However, the affair did not end there, developing into the News Corporation ethics scandal as wrongdoing beyond the News of the World and beyond phone hacking came to light.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media coverage in conjunction with the news media phone hacking scandal</span>

This is a chronological list of key newspaper articles that made significant new public disclosures about the illegal acquisition of confidential information by news media companies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kamal Ahmed (journalist)</span> British journalist

Kamal Ahmed is a British journalist, who was Editorial Director of BBC News. He was Economics Editor at the BBC until November 2018, and Business Editor from March 2014, until Simon Jack was appointed as his successor in February 2016.

<i>Hack Attack</i> Book by Nick Davies

Hack Attack: How the Truth Caught Up with Rupert Murdoch is a 2014 book about the News International phone hacking scandal by the British investigative journalist Nick Davies.

Byline Times is a British newspaper and website founded in March 2019 by Peter Jukes and Stephen Colegrave, who are also its executive editors. It is a development of Byline, a crowdfunding and media outlet platform founded in April 2015 by Seung-yoon Lee and Daniel Tudor.

References

  1. ↑ Davies, Nick (1997). Dark heart: the shocking truth about hidden Britain. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN   978-0-7011-6351-8.
  2. ↑ Davies, Nick (2000). The school report: why Britain's schools are failing. London: Vintage. ISBN   978-0-09-942216-7.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Davies, Nick (2014). Hack attack: the inside story of how the truth caught up with Rupert Murdoch (First American ed.). New York: Faber & Faber, an affiliate of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN   978-0-86547-881-7.
  4. 1 2 3 Davies, Nicholas (2008). Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN   978-0-7011-8145-1.
  5. 1 2 3 Yong, Ed (1 July 2009). "Flat Earth News with Nick Davies – a discussion on the breaking of journalism". National Geographic . Science / Not Exactly Rocket Science (NERS). Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Davies, Nick (4 February 2008). "Nick Churnalism has taken the place of what we should be doing: Telling the truth". Press Gazette. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  7. ↑ Lanchester, John (6 March 2008). "Riots, Terrorism etc". London Review of Books . 30 (5): 3. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  8. ↑ Riddell, Mary (3 February 2008). "Failures of the Fourth Estate". The Guardian . The Observer. London. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  9. ↑ Oborne, Peter (30 January 2008). "The vile behaviour of the press". The Spectator. Archived from the original on 25 September 2009. Retrieved 29 September 2009.
  10. ↑ Orr, Deborah (15 February 2008). "Flat Earth News, by Nick Davies". The Independent. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  11. 1 2 Stabe, Martin (11 February 2008). "Flat Earth News: Still more reviews". Press Gazette. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  12. ↑ "Kamal Ahmed accuses Nick Davies of 'scurrilous journalism'". Press Gazette. 11 February 2008. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
  13. ↑ Ponsford, Dominic (14 February 2020). "Solicitors engaged over Flat Earth News". Press Gazette. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
  14. ↑ Turvill, William (5 August 2014). "Nick Davies: The bad guys hate me... but most journalists are decent people and are glad I exposed phone-hacking". Press Gazette. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
  15. ↑ Ponsford, Dominic (23 January 2008). "Sunday Telegraph obtained Dr Kelly's phone bill". Press Gazette. Retrieved 16 November 2020.
  16. ↑ "Great journalist of his generation Nick Davies to give workshop in West Cork". 10 June 2015. Retrieved 12 November 2020.
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