In an interview on Privacy

Nick Davies, Flat Earth News.

This to me is fascinating because it’s the first time that a top-quality journalist has done a complete exposé on the way in which the media distort what’s going on. He says in his preface that dog doesn’t eat dog. Usually, all institutions are open to criticism by the media except the media themselves. So this is the first time that somebody has actually done it to the media. It’s immensely interesting because he has done a great deal of research and he gives all sorts of examples.

Can you give me one?

Well, he starts off by setting out how the millennium bug was supposed to be a great danger and how the whole thing was really completely invented. How at one point Murdoch completely destroyed a political opponent in Australia with a story that simply wasn’t true. He says Murdoch may not have known it wasn’t true, but it wasn’t, and, of course, the now-discredited story of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Does he say why they’re doing this? Why would it be in a newspaper’s interest to make stuff up?

That’s the interesting thing because he points out that conventional wisdom is that it’s either the proprietors dictating or pressure from advertisers and the need to sell newspapers, but I think what emerges from the book is that it’s a widespread disease and that journalists lose fairly early, or a lot of them do, the fundamental purpose of their job which is to tell the truth. And the point he makes is that if a journalist doesn’t tell the truth then he really ceases to be a journalist in any meaningful sense. And, in fact, failure to tell the truth and willingness to distort is so widespread.

I wonder if that is what journalists feel their job is. I think a lot of journalists probably feel that their job is to go off and have an exciting time and look at things and tell stories and entertain the readers.

Well, I think that’s probably right and it’s certainly what emerges from his book. I think the point he’s making is that the profession of journalism consists of informing the public about things about which they would not otherwise have known. That’s, of course, not necessarily the reason why people buy newspapers, but it is the basic task of journalism. But, as you say, not all journalists see it like that.

No. I think a lot of people think they are telling stories. People read the newspapers over breakfast not necessarily to be better informed but often to be entertained.

That’s absolutely right. But, of course, it does then raise the question of whether those same journalists couldn’t just sit and write fiction. The problem is that what they are doing is writing fiction dressed up as fact. I think that is the fundamental point. If they printed the story in a different colour when it was wholly or partly invented I think that would be less objectionable. I think what is objectionable is to dress up fiction as fact.