Flat Earth News

Nick Davies (2008)
Davies challenges the notion that journalism is fair, reasoned, or well researched, arguing that journalism has been replaced by what he calls 'churnalism', journalists rehashing press releases without having sufficient time to properly research or fact check pieces. He makes constant references to public relations being dressed up as news and the consequent impact on discourse. He also makes clear that there is a reliance on what he calls the 'dark arts', that is to say illegal practices such as wire tapping to get out information.

He alos makes the controversial claim that the Chernobyl disaster is an example of 'flat earth news', saying that the number of people who died is merely in the dozens, and that anything higher is speculative and consequently untrue. This is where Davies and I part company. Having worked in a Nuclear power research centre and having a physics degree perhaps gives me a slight advantage in saying that I think that we need to be very cautious in dealing with nuclear power, and in particular making the balck and white claim that Chernobyl was not a disaster. Several people did die, and it is still unclear what the total death toll is, although a WHO report states the death toll is around 5,000. Davies cites this same report as proving the death toll is only 66, so we clearly differ in our interpretation of this document, and I would invite interested readers to look through it themselves.

Nonetheless despite this flaw, in the main this is an excellent book, with excellent chapters on deception by the media, about the dangers of becoming too close to power and of corruption.