Blog  - Interview: Why Media Drag Down Societies - Nick Davies

Interview: Why Media Drag Down Societies - Nick Davies

"Just like gay people, we need journalist pride to save our business,” Nick Davies told a Belgian crowd on Saturday 4 October 2009 at the writers’ conference Het Andere Boek  in Antwerp. The former British journalist of the year wrote Flat Earth News a best-seller on falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

He claims that commercialism at the heart of the mass media creates trivial news consumers while killing professional journalism. The Guardian journalist named De Morgen as a Belgian example of a similar evolution to Great Britain. Is he right or just nostalgic about the good old days as critics like to point out.

Joseph Pulitzer once said: “A cynical, mercenary, demagogic, corrupt press will produce in time a people as itself.” Do you share his view?

Yes, he might be right. It is a more circular relationship though. There has been a great shift in the people of the developed world as to what they want from their newspapers. They are less political and see themselves more like consumers. They are looking for trivial news. The more that we give them trivial and untrue news, the more we create people with short attention spans. They have no interest in politics, in their countries and the great moral debates of their time. The media drag down their societies.

What exactly does Flat Earth News stand for?

In the Middle Ages people used to believe that the earth was flat. Everybody said so. Until someone checked. The mass media produce a lot of false news. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the millennium bug turned out to be a big hype and Clinton’s affairs weren’t that spectacular at all.

Like gay people, we need journalist pride parades to save our business

What do you see as the main reason for this problem?

People tend to believe in conspiracy theories. Many think that it is the direct meddling of the owner of a newspaper or magazine into the daily business of a newsroom. Now this occasionally might happen, it is quite unusual. More important is the commercial logic of making the highest profits as possible by cutting production costs. Mass media produce falsehood, distortion and propaganda in order to sell. The essential job of a good journalist is finding and checking facts and telling the truth. Accurate and balanced reporting used to be the ground rules of real journalism.

A team of academics of the Cardiff University found out that only 12 percent of all news stories are factually checked. I am not talking of tabloids, but of serious newspapers like The Guardian, The Times, etc. The same rate could be identified when talking about the authenticity of the used information. About 80 percent comes from PR and wire agencies. De Morgen is a Belgian show case of a similar evolution in Great Britain. 

 

Can you only imagine a dim future for journalism?

Making arrows once used to be an important profession. They are not around anymore. At the end journalists might die out as well. There is a great struggle going on about the future of journalism. The old way of funding by selling newspapers and advertisements doesn’t work anymore. The internet is taking further advertising away. Now there is the credit crisis.

We need a new business model, but nobody yet knows what precisely that is going to be. It could be that mini-media will replace the mass media. In the United States and to some extent in Europe foundations fund these projects. Production costs are a lot lower on the internet. There is no need for print, planes and trains. Public-private partnerships may point the way out. It is, however, unclear how this will evolve on a grand scale.

The media created trivial news consumers. We drag down our societies

Critics of your book say that you are suffering from nostalgia of the good old days?

In the nineties we had the dogma of dog doesn’t eat dog. Journalists could write about whatever they wanted, but not about journalism. In those days there was a lot of shouting and discussion in the newsrooms. Now that is gone and people write about celebrities, pop stars and family drama. The managing director used to walk one step behind the editor. This has been reversed. Infotainment and churnalism (recycling and copying stories) replaced journalism.

Author: Rafael Porto Carrero