Sticking to my short-lived journalism roots and concerned for my future in being a reporter with some integrity, here's a suggestion and review. I think many will agree with me that Flat Earth News is an essential read. I said I would propose books on here that will both enlighten and entertain, and when it comes to being blind to the hocus pocus scare-mongering and bare-faced lies of the news media, I think far too many people are ignorant to the full extent of things. If you'd like to see how and why the news media is used as one of the main agents of exploitation and control in society then read this book. The "liberated ones" are bound and gagged as much as the rest of us, and just as corrupt as their masters.
Flat Earth News
By Nick Davies
Vintage Books, £8.99, pp 420
The Earth is flat. If Nick Davies’ shocking revelations on the reliability of our news sources are correct, when it comes to public knowledge, nothing is certain, and it could well be.
As his title suggests, Davies exposes the “falsehood, distortion and propaganda” that is rife within today’s media and reproaches the tendency in which it often goes unquestioned by those who partake in it, until somebody proves it to be false – a backward process.
Davies is a multi-award winning investigative journalist – an expert in exposing the dirty dealings of powers-that-be. No holds barred, he breaks the long-standing taboo of turning on Fleet Street, and holds the entire Fourth Estate accountable for its crimes.
His attack is mainly focused on the UK’s newspaper industry, its regulators and the PR agencies. The latter flooding the newsrooms with unoriginal and often inaccurate press material; contemptibly popularised by Davies, in a word, as ‘churnalism.’
In a profession, where the “first obligation is to the truth [and it’s] first loyalty to its citizens” everyday Journalists shame their code of ethics and mislead the public with tainted and fabricated information, to the extent where we have become “a society which has started to lose contact with reality”.
Davies’ sources appear both valid and reliable and measure the true extent of corruption, ignorance and intellectual repression in the newsroom.
He demonstrates how the forces of commercialism have turned journalism into “a profession so damaged to the point where most of the time, most of its members are no longer able to do their job”.
This is a vital read for anyone working within the news media, but will evoke a degree of self-loathing and powerlessness as an industry puppet. Ironically, it will leave unable to tear your eyes away from front to back, as with masochistic awe you continue to discover how depraved a rabbit hole a supposedly noble profession with idealist intentions has tumbled into.
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