In a devastating critique of the ills of British journalism, Nick Davies exposes the alarming degree to which reporters are being exploited by the public relations industry, spin doctors, assorted publicists and the like but rather disappointingly he skates over the full impact of the failings which he identifies so clearly in Flat Earth News.
Declining editorial standards have made it all the easier for successive governments to collude with proprietors in manipulating the news media, never more so than during the build-up to the war against Iraq and the blatant misreporting of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.
While Davies deserves to be congratulated for his diligence and courage in identifying the many falsehoods and distortions of the intelligence services -- and also the gullibility of the media in accepting them -- he makes only one passing reference to Rupert Murdoch’s role as cheerleader for George Bush and Tony Blair, preferring instead to focus an entire chapter on unseemly and incestuous infighting between Guardian journalists like himself and those on their pro-war sister paper, the Observer.
Alastair Campbell’s ruthless exploitation of both the Observer’s editor Roger Alton and its hapless political editor Kamal Ahmed (an allegation which is hotly denied by Alton and Ahmed) is obviously regarded by Davies as an important case history in explaining why reporters performed so badly when covering the "biggest single story of our era". But true or false, it pales into insignificance when compared with the damage which the Murdoch press has inflicted on journalistic standards.
Without the unswerving support of the Sun and the other News International titles Blair might well have failed to gain Parliamentary approval for the American-led invasion and, more to the point, found it far harder to have secured re-election in 2005.
Yet time and again, Blair and Campbell have avoided being held to account over Labour’s close working relationship with the Murdoch press: the former Prime Minister made no reference to his own collusion with newspapers like the Sun in his infamous "feral beasts" speech criticising the media (12.6.2007); nor did his former press secretary offer an explanation when delivering the annual Hugh Cudlipp lecture (28.1.2008).
Davies is equally reticent, limiting himself in Flat Earth News to a few cursory lines acknowledging that the invasion of Iraq was "supported by Murdoch outlets across the planet"; only one Sun headline was considered worthy of inclusion: "Brits 45 minutes from Doom".
Research for the book conducted by the journalism department of Cardiff University concentrated on four quality newspapers (The Times, Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph) and Daily Mail and produced some shocking results: 80 per cent of their stories were "wholly, mainly or partially constructed from second-hand material, provided by news agencies and by the public relations industry".
But by omitting mass-selling tabloid newspapers from his research, Davies overlooked a prime driver of the "churnalism" which he so deplores and which has had such a negative impact on media standards.
Kelvin MacKenzie, who as editor of the Sun pioneered the "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" school of journalism, does not even rate a mention in Flat Earth News. Yet MacKenzie’s blatant invention of stories often based on nothing more than "An onlooker said…" has encouraged a generation of journalists only too willing to manufacture story lines based on quotes from anonymous sources.
Alastair Campbell gave the whole process another push by re-writing the rule book for government information officers who were instructed to "grab the agenda" by trailing ministerial announcements on an off-the-record basis.
And by doubling and then trebling the number of political spin doctors, New Labour created a web of anonymous sources whose quotes could be attributed to "a Downing Street insider", "friend of the minister", "Whitehall official" and all the other un-named and often fictitious sources which the author so despises.
Somewhat surprisingly Davies takes pity on Campbell for his apparent inability to get across his justification for the media techniques which Downing Street deployed: New Labour had to fight back because the political prospects of Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock had been "ruined by spectacularly malicious coverage".
While this explanation might be new to Davies it has been repeated ad nauseam by Campbell himself. Once installed in Downing Street, his subsequent "fight back" plumbed new depths and in the early years of New Labour, Blair’s press secretary went round the world assisting the Sun’s then political editor, Trevor Kavanagh, in inventing exclusive stories which debased British journalism. Two examples suffice: "Japan says sorry to the Sun for World War Two"( 14.1.1998) and in another "historic apology" to the Sun: "Argentina says: We’re sorry for Falklands" (23.10.1998).
To his great credit Davies has unearthed some scandalous examples of the way the supposedly serious press was manipulated by the intelligence agencies both before, during and after the Iraq war, but perhaps he should have put more effort into examining the role of mass-selling newspapers.
Again a couple of headlines help explain why despite a million people marching through London against the war, Blair not only won Parliamentary but also gained re-election: "The Sun with the Black Watch: We beat Napoleon, Kaiser and Hitler…it’s just another job" (25.10.2004) and "The Sun takes on the Taliban" (9.10.2006).
Under successive Prime Ministers, from Thatcher to Brown, the Sun has broken new ground in giving the government of the day an easy ride and at the same it has had a profound effect on journalistic standards. At the launch party for Flat Earth News Davies urged the assembled throng to raise a toast to the rebels, those journalists prepared to speak out about the way the ethics of journalism have been debased. More power to his elbow!
Flat Earth News by Nick Davies, Chatto & Windus, £17.99
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