The crisis of news journalism. Part 2:

The news journalist

• October 23, 2012: Clark Kent (Superman) is to quit The Daily Planet newspaper in protest at the state of modern journalism

• Kent started at the daily in 1938, and has worked there for the past 74 years (despite the fact that he is only 27)

• Superman writer Scott Lobdell told USA Today: “Superman is arguably the most powerful person on the planet, but how long can he sit at his desk with someone breathing down his neck and treating him like the least important person in the world?”

Trust in UK professions, 1983-2011 (average)

Percentage answering “yes” to the question: “Would you generally trust them to tell the truth?”

• Doctors 89%• Teachers 86%• Professors 77%• Judges 75%• Clergy/priests 75%• Television news readers 68%• Scientists 67%• The police 61%• Ordinary man / woman in the street 56%• Civil servants 43%• Trade union officials 36%• Business leaders 28%• Government ministers 19%• Politicians generally 18%• Journalists 17%

Source: Ipsos Mori, 2011 http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Polls/Veracity2011.pdf

Structure of this lecture:

• 1. Identifying the problem:Flat Earth News

• 2. Exposing the problem:The UK phone hacking scandal

• 3. In search of solutions

1: Identifying the problem

This story was widely published in the UK and elsewhere in September 2002, but it was completely wrong...

This was the starting point for the book by Nick Davies, “Flat Earth News”…

http://www.mwaw.net/2007/12/08/davies/

Guardian journalist Nick Davies commissioned serious academic research from Cardiff University…

The Quality and Independence of British Journalism - Tracking the changes over 20 years - Cardiff School of Journalism (2006)

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/jomec/resources/QualityIndependenceofBritishJournalism.pdf

• Looked at the number of journalists employed in the national press over the last two decades and the volume of work they are required to do

• Studied the domestic news content at the “top end” of British press and broadcast news to establish the extent to which journalists depend on public relations and other media, especially wire services.

• Carried out case studies to establish the role played by PR (public relations), other media and the wire services in shaping news content

• Tested the “news value” of PR-inspired stories with a panel of experts

• Wire services / news agencies:

Reuters, Dow Jones, Associated Press, Agence France Press, Press Association, DPA, Interfax, TT

Main activity: These services provide the ”raw material” for newspapers and broadcasters

• PR = public relations:These are professional communications managers for businesses, organisations, individuals and governments

Main activity: targeting information at the media through press releases, press conferences,

interviews, spamming my inbox with press releases!

First finding: working harder

• Today’s editorial employees are, on average, expected to produce three times as much content as 20 years ago

Second finding: reliant on narrow range of sources

• Fewer than one in five press articles (19%) were based mainly on information that did not come from pre-packaged sources

• Indeed, 60% of press stories relied wholly or mainly on pre-packaged information

• Only 12% were entirely independent of such material

Stories with content deriving from PR, news wires / other media (%)

Press BroadcastAll from PR, wires/other media 38 21Mainly from PR, wires/other media 22 13Mix of PR, wires/other media with other

information 13 25Mainly other information 7 20All other information 12 18Unclear 8 3

Role of wire services

•30% of the stories in the press sample repeated wire service material almost directly, and a further 19% were largely dependent on wire material

•In other words, nearly half of all press stories appeared to come wholly or mainly from wire services

•Over a quarter of broadcast news items (27%) contained information that appeared to be mainly or wholly derived from wires or other media

Stories in which news wires or other media were replicated (%)Press

BroadcastAll from wires/other media 30 16Mainly from wires/other media 19 11Mix of wires/other media with other information 13 20Mainly other information 8 18Wire covered story but not used 5 5No evidence 25 30

Role of PR

•Nearly one in five newspaper stories and one in six broadcast stories were verifiably derived mainly or wholly from PR material or activity

Stories in which PR materials were replicated (%)

Press BroadcastAll from PR 10 10Mainly from PR 9 7Mix of PR with other information 11 14Mainly other information 11 21Looks like PR but not found 13 6No evidence 46 42

It was roughly the same picture for all the papers studied

Is the main source / information contextualised with other substantive information or views? (%)

Press BroadcastYes, thoroughly 19 42Yes, briefly 31 30No 50 28

• Taken together, these data portray a picture of the news gathering and news reporting in which any meaningful, independent journalistic activity is the exception rather than the rule

• “Churnalism”, not journalism

Examples of “flat earth” news stories:

In 1999 this book became a New York Times bestseller because of the media panic over the “millennium bug”, or Y2K bug.

But the story was 100% wrong

WRONG !http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/23/us-cyprus-bailout-idUSBRE8AM0BH20121123

Paul Hucker, the “football fan” who insured himself against England getting knocked out of the 2006 world cup finals!This story was published in many national and local news outletshttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/suffolk/4968092.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2011/feb/23/churnalism-press-releases-news-video

Kent Brockman (TV anchor on The Simpsons):

“Reporters used to expose corruption and corporate greed. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle at the teat of

misinformation and poop it into the diaper called the six- o’clock news.”

Davies: “The rules of production” (from Flat Earth News)

To cut costs and increase revenue:

1. Run cheap stories

2. Select safe facts / ideas

3. Avoid the electric fence

4. Always give both sides of the story

5. Give them what they want

6. Bias against the truth

7. Give them what they want to believe in

8. Go with the moral panic

9. Ninja turtle syndrome

There is a gap in mainstream journalism that is being filled by others…

2. Exposing the problem: The UK phone hacking

scandal

2006: Detectives arrest the News of the World’s royal editor Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/news-world-phone-tapping-timeline?intcmp=239

2007: Andy Coulson quits as editor of the News of the World and becomes the director of communications for David Cameron, prime minister

2009: Nick Davies reveals that News of the World reporters, with the knowledge of senior staff, illegally accessed messages from the mobile phones of celebrities and politicians while Coulson was editorhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jul/08/murdoch-papers-phone-hacking

July 2011 - Within days of this scoop:

News International says News of the World will close in one week

Cameron announces inquiries into hacking and press regulation

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/04/milly-dowler-voicemail-hacked-news-of-world

• News Corporation withdraws bid for BSkyB

• Rebekah Brooks resigns as head of News International

• Sir Paul Stephenson, Metropolitan Police Commissioner, resigns

• Rebekah Brooks arrested

• Metropolitan assistant commissioner John Yates resigns

• MPs question James and Rupert Murdoch

• The chair of the Press Complaints Commission, Baroness Buscombe, resignsJames Murdoch, 2009: “The only reliable, durable,

and perpetual guarantor of independence is profit.”

Chipping Norton – the centre of the intriguehttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/interactive-graphics/9124278/Whos-who-in-the-Chipping-Norton-set.html

3: In search of a solution

• Media ownership

• Regulation

• Public service journalism

• Subsidies

• Conscience clause

• Media unions

All is not lost!

“We are going to really see Clark Kent come into his own in the next few years, as a guy who takes to the internet and to the airwaves and starts speaking an unvarnished truth.

“He is more likely to start the next Huffington Post or the next Drudge Report than he is to go find someone else to get assignments or draw a paycheck from.”

Scott Lobdell, Superman writer