UK News Media: a hyper-critical view

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• Nick Davies
• Monday 19 May 2008, 20:00-21:30
• Combination Room, Wolfson College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Professor John Naughton.

Nick Davies, a well-known and award-winning investigative journalist, has recently published Flat Earth News, a controversial and highly-critical analysis of the British news media in which he argues that the business of truth has been “slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance”. The book examines national news stories which, Davies argues, “turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a new machinery of international propaganda.” With the help of researchers from Cardiff University, who ran a detailed analysis of the contents and sources for our daily news, Davies found that “most reporters most of the time are not allowed to dig up stories or check their facts”, leading him to describe UK journalism as “a profession corrupted at the core”. In the book, he also presents a new model for understanding news.

We have invited Nick Davies to present his critique to an academic audience. We have also invited John Kelly, a well-known Washington Post columnist who is currently a Reuters Fellow at Oxford, to comment on the issues from a non-UK perspective.

The seminar will be chaired by Dr Phil Parvin of the Department of Social and Political Sciences, whose research interests include the relationship between media and democratic institutions.

This talk is part of the Wolfson Press Fellowship series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Combination Room, Wolfson College
• Wolfson College Talks & Events
• Wolfson Press Fellowship

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