Review - Flat Earth News (by Nick Davies)

By no1, 26 September, 2010

The cover notes of Flat Earth News offer a fairly concise synopsis of the contents:

An award winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

For anyone yet to be convinced that the “popular” media is anything other than unbiased, impartial, and representative of the truth, this is the book for you. Lifting the lid on the murky world of contemporary journalism, insider, Nick Davies, reveals an industry dominated by PR, lobbying, mistruths and powerful interests.

He painstakingly chronicles how the journalistic milieu – colonised as it is by commercial and power interests – routinely ingests and reproduces prepackaged disinformation designed to satisfy its paymasters. Echoing similar conclusions to Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent, Flat Earth News is littered with examples of how a socially constructed “reality” is used to achieve mass acquiescence with war, corruption and other acts of villainy by the rich and powerful. It forms another vital, essential and telling reminder to look beyond the façade of media distortion in order to seek out something vaguely resembling the truth.

Flat Earth News (Nick Davies)
Vintage Books 2008 – 432 pages – £8.99 – ISBN: 978-0099512684

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