Flat Earth News Book Report

Flat Earth News: An award-winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media. Nick Davies. London: Vintage (2009)

Nick Davies’s Flat Earth News explores the problems with modern journalism. Whilst journalists attempt to hide their ‘tricks of the trade’, Davies uses his book to expose them, stating in the prologue that the book is “a brazen attempt to break that rule” (p.1).

Split into four sections, the book breaks down the journalism industry and analyses its different components. Part one explores what flat earth news is by using the ‘Millennium bug’ as a case study. Section two breaks down the structure of news corporations, comparing the journalists to their bosses and how this relationship along with institutional

A word meaning the quick-turnover of news which therefore limits the quality of it, Davies uses it frequently throughout the book. Whilst journalism can be poor quality when written at such a fast pace, Davies fails to mention the higher quality journalism which is written with longer deadlines. Long-form features, colour pieces and opinion pieces are some of the most interesting parts of journalism because they are given the time to be written at a higher quality. Many journalists become journalists for this opportunity to write longer pieces because they love to write. Davies also fails to mention why this journalism is such poor quality. With the rise of the internet in journalism, stories must be written quickly so they can be the first published online, thus having more readers. Without a high number of views, the websites will not get advertising and without advertising they will not have money to survive. In a society that is ruled by money, unfortunately this means journalists sometimes have to choose between quality and

However, the book is not ‘How to improve the journalism industry’ it merely states the who, what and why of the failure of it. Perhaps if Nick Davies has so much to say about how bad it is, he should at least have something to say about how it could be improved. At the end of the day, he is criticising his colleagues, his friends and himself. Even if he has no improvement suggestions, maybe he could at least have some good words to say about journalists. Yes, some journalists are lazy sneaky liars but others are hardworking and care about the business they work in and the content they produce. Davies is careful though to not make all journalists hated, tactically pointing out that they are not all lazy or liars – and he obviously classes himself as this