WHAT THE BOOK SAYS
- Global media is full of falsehood, distortion and propaganda
- The author is a journalist who started investigating his own colleagues, only to discover that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance
- Among the culprits are the Sunday paper that allows MI6 and the CIA to plant fiction in its columns; a newsroom that routinely rejects stories about black people; and papers that support law and order but pay cash bribes to bent detectives
- Many stories are no more accurate than claiming the earth is flat, including the Millennium Bug and WMD in Iraq. These taint government policy and pervert belief
- Most reporters do not have time to check what they are sent – instead they rely on the Press Association or PR stories to generate “churnalism”
- His research shows that 70% of stories are wholly or partly rewritten from wire copy, without further corroboration
- The rules of production are dictated by the media moguls:
- Cut costs by running cheap stories, selecting safe facts and ideas, avoiding the electric fence (any bodies that can hurt the press), and always giving both sides of the story
- Increase revenue by giving the readers what they want to believe in
WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT
- It’s a very ballsy, well-researched book, as you would expect from an investigative journalist
- Revisiting the cosy relationship between PR and the media can't be a bad thing
WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH
- Public Relations and newspapers are up in arms about the book
- It names names, in a specific and authoritative way
- There is a tinge of ‘chip on shoulder’ about it
- If you work in PR, you need some decent answers to the allegations
