Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media
by Nick Davies (Chatto & Windus, £17.99)
The American journalist James Fallows has best summed up the great question of the free media: “One way or another, self-governing societies must figure out the suitable commercial channels through which the information necessary for democratic decisions must be spread.” There you have it: democratic citizens need information, and competing versions of both the truth and the good life; commerce needs profit. In that push and pull resides a fundamental, neverending question.
To a limited and lessening extent, Europeans and others have moderated the “commercial” factor that Fallows takes for granted by using state-gathered revenue to fund public service broadcasters. It has always been limited because newspapers are commercial; and they, not broadcasters, are the engines of opinion as well as of news. It is now lessening because the vast choice now available through satellite and digital channels is overwhelmingly provided
by commercial broadcasters. This drives public broadcasters into mimicking commercial strategies to retain audiences, while rendering unto the highbrows and the politicians the niches they demand.
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