Flat Earth News

Very quickly (before the link widget here expires) - What I Learned This Week By Opening One Book.

The book is Nick Davies' "Flat Earth News", and I learned just why it is that (as anybody with eyes can see) we have a media culture where "ignorance is accepted as knowledge and falsehood is accepted as truth" (p. 154).

The answer is essentially (though unwittingly) G. K. Chesterton's: "a man writing at speed will write what he already knows" (which is why newspapers never contained anything new even a century ago). But the conditions of journalistic employment that drive the problem have got a lot worse over the last 20 years: instead of going out, drinking in pubs with contacts, journalists are now shackled to a computer, recycling wire stories or stories from other papers, with the occasional bit of google-supported rewriting, and no encouragement or incentive to check facts or interpretations with people who know anything about the background, leading to (p. 152):

the arbitrary and the irrational replacing real judgements; the casual recycling of unreliable claims; and the structural bias towards the political and moral beliefs of the most powerful groups in society.

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Journalism

A conversation in the comments of another blog brought up some remarks that the Archbishop of Westminster made about social networking sites (Facebook and so forth), as reported in the Telegraph. Reading it is hilarious.

I should perhaps say that I wrote my doctorate about newspapers, so when I'm reading a newspaper report my foremost thought is not "What happened?" (or "What was said?"), but "What does the journalist think happened?" (or "Did he even understand what was said?").

It's unavoidable that some simplification should be found in a newspaper report (that is pretty much what journalists exist to do: pot things), but even so it's remarkable here how the Archbishop's own words are an awful lot more nuanced than those that the journalist "fills in" without using quotation marks. It begins with the headline.

Headline: "Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide"
Actual quotation near bottom of article: "Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships."

Journalist: "The archbishop blamed social network sites for leaving children with impoverished friendships."
Actual words of Archbishop: "Facebook and MySpace might contribute towards communities, but I'm wary about it. It's not rounded communication so it won't build a rounded community," he said. "If we mean by community a genuine growing together and a mutual sharing in an interest that is of some significance then it needs more than Facebook."

It is worth reminding young people (and not-so-young people, and - need I add? - ourselves) that a Facebook "friend" and an online "community" are not at all the same thing as a friend or a community. That handy tools for keeping in touch with people at a distance shouldn't distract us from getting in touch with people in the same street as us, or the same house. Strange that it's a point that a Telegraph journalist can't grasp without sensationalising.
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