First proof of rot in the fourth estate

Nick Davies's book, Flat Earth News, has addressed some home truths of journalism and created a sensation in media circles in the United Kingdom.

The award-winning investigative journalist told Weekend Review what inspired his book and what he calls “flat Earth news''.

“There had always been this understanding among journalists that we write about everyone but ourselves,'' Davies says. The world media, he believes, have failed in the narration of the Barack Obama story.

“It's a complete failure to ask difficult questions and I would say that is partly because a presidential candidate has a very powerful public relations operation at work,'' Davies says. “They cleverly summarised everything they wanted to say in the slogan: ‘Change, Yes We Can'. That is PR.''

Little wonder Obama beat the likes of Apple and Nike to be named the Marketer of the Year in 2008 by Advertising Age magazine.

In Flat Earth News, Davies exposes the tightening grip of public relations and intelligence agencies over the media and the execrable mechanics employed by both to spoon-feed their messages.

He sheds light on how the “spooks'', overworked hacks and genuinely ignorant “churnalists'', abetted the United States-led invasion of Iraq and became “information warriors''.

Frustrated by the news media's failure to tell the truth about itself, Davies was driven to write the book. “The media had told the world that weapons of mass destruction existed [in Iraq].

[But] when [they] discovered that the weapons didn't exist, they talked about the issue as if it was created by the governments and intelligence agencies alone, and did not admit that they too were part of the misinformation.''

Davies now sees the media failing in its coverage of US President Obama, too. “[When] the media believe they [have identified] powerful emotions [among the people], instead of telling the truth they fit the story into the emotion. [The media does] it during war. We do it with big deaths. And we did it with Obama.

“We reckoned people wanted hope and so we produced and continue to produce stories which sell newspapers because they make people feel better, feel hopeful. I think there has been a huge example of ‘flat Earth news' around Obama.''

Of particular interest in the book is the chapter on misleading reportage in The Observer (a sister publication of the Guardian), in the run-up to the Iraq war.

That Davies himself writes as a special correspondent for the Guardian, did not deter him from doing exposés where he felt they were required. Minus grumbling from certain quarters, the response for the book turned out to be overwhelmingly positive, especially from fellow journalists.

Did he lose any journalist friends in the process? “I have lost a few,'' he admits. “But I have made hundreds of new ones. There were a few who just didn't like the fact that I had decided to reveal what happened inside newsrooms. They got angry. There was one who threatened to hit me.''

The assault on truth in Western “free'' media perhaps poses a bigger threat than the media in authoritarian countries such as Myanmar, North Korea and Russia. Davies feels Western readers are more susceptible to manipulation than those of societies where censorship and press crackdowns are rife.

“I think it is a problem for Western news consumers that they are told their news media are free and therefore tend to believe them. But the extraordinary thing is that the media are not free. They are not free to tell the truth. But the mechanisms which stop them from telling the truth are subtle and invisible.''

In 2006, Davies attended a London conference which attracted delegates from the world over, many of them involved in military information operations.

During this event, which he discusses in Flat Earth News, he had “heated conversations'' with mid-ranking US military officers who, Davis writes, “insisted on their right to lie to the media''.

What kind of ignoble arguments could spur anyone to defend lying?

“They have two arguments,'' Davies says. “One is that all journalists are liars anyway so all we are doing is to make sure it is our lie and not their lie.

The second thing is we are involved in what they call GWOT, or global war on terror. We are involved in this fight for the survival of human life, or whatever, therefore that is so important it gives us the right to do whatever is needed.

It is the same logic at work in the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib or the extraordinary rendition programme. It is an argument which says all things we believe are right and [that anything] can be sacrificed for the greater cause of GWOT.''

But the danger — as a direct consequence of such perfidious practices — is the media losing its trust among a widening section of news consumers who, instead, turn to conspiracy theories and other nonsense floating in cyberspace.

“If you want to believe the 9/11 terrorist attacks were organised by Israelis, or by George W. Bush, you can find websites that can support that,'' Davies says.

“I know people that believe the entire world is run by a conspiracy of people called the illuminati and there are websites which tell them the illuminati are running the world. And if you are a racist you can find racist websites.

"If you are a Marxist you can find Marxist websites. And that is very dangerous because what you are losing is the chief function of journalism, which is somebody who checks and says what is wrong.''

Pro-Israel pressure groups such as Honest Reporting are known for [attacking] — by way of mass complaint letters and pressuring editors — journalists who they believe cause offence, Davies says when asked about the unfair treatment of Palestine in the Western media.

“Honest Reporting and those other organisations have publicly celebrated victories which they believe they scored [against] media organisations by making them change stories and the angle of coverage,'' Davies says.

Journalists specialising in reporting about the Middle East, whom Davies has interviewed, have confessed that such pressure tactics have an impact.

“As an example, they said, if you produce a story based on what Palestinians are saying, the news desk will say we must have an Israeli voice in this story. But it doesn't work the other way around.

“If you produce a story full of Israeli voices, they don't say we have to have a Palestinian voice,'' he adds. “Because the Palestinians don't have that kind of aggressive machinery to punish you if you fail to include them.

"And the interesting thing is this is not done for ideological reasons, it is not that the news desks are inherently Zionists or anti-Palestinian, they just want a safe, easy life.

"They don't want 1,000 e-mail complaints and they don't want lawyers coming at them or Israeli diplomats complaining to their bosses.''

In spite of substantial progress towards bridging ethnic divides, elements in the UK media cling to old racial stereotypes. The tabloid Daily Mail, for example, is accused in Flat Earth News of projecting a stereotype of the black people.

With Obama in power and the efficacious PR machinery surrounding the president, is the Mail changing?

“There are racial stereotypes about black people which the Daily Mail likes running,'' he says. “And one of those is of the good black man. The black man who is more white than the whites. For example they liked the black British soldier in Iraq who won the Victoria Cross for bravery.

"He is a good black man in the eyes of the Daily Mail. Barack Obama fits into that model. And they also like very bad black people for stories.''

Davies did a study of black people appearing in photographs in the Daily Mail and discovered that a disproportionate number of them were caught breaking the law.

In his judgment Obama is not a “radical'' and strongly suspects the media angle will change and he will come to be regarded as a weak president, possibly similar to former president Jimmy Carter.

Davies points out that a significant portion of American electorate that voted was Republican, “even with the credit crisis, Iraq and everything around George Bush''.

“The answer to the question of how we get second term is we have to run this country from the right-of-centre. Otherwise we will lose those few Republicans who changed sides.''

Davies feels Obama may suffer from the lack of political experience.

No doubt the sycophantic and fawning coterie of reporters around Obama stands guilty of giving him an easy ride. Davies feels it is safe to say the media have already failed by not asking these questions and not having asked them during the election campaign.

“Instead, what they did was also slightly racist,'' he says. “It was a kind of reverse racism. They saw a black man. And that is all they saw. And then they said he is a heroic black man because he is winning. But there is more to a politician than the colour of his skin.''

Syed Hamad Ali is a freelance writer based in Cambridge, UK.