Nick Davies, corporate media betrays its public

[conspiracy analyst]

How the Spooks Stole the News

The main critique from even the most 'liberal' journalists is that the whole edifice of the 'war on terror' was based on a provocation ie 9/11.
Without that as the starting principle Nick Davies is scratching the surface of what most people know already. The media sells lies as truth, war as peace, division as harmony.
Truth never was a commodity to be bought and sold.



Politics, philosophy and society
Failures of the Fourth Estate


Flat Earth News by Nick Davies turns the spotlight on the workings of the press, says Mary Riddell

Sunday February 3, 2008
The Observer



Flat Earth News
by Nick Davies
Chatto & Windus £17.99, pp320

Dog does not eat dog. This, as Nick Davies says, is an old Fleet Street convention. His latest book is 'a brazen attempt to break that rule'. It is a task that Davies more than fulfils, swallowing the leash and kennel for good measure. His diet sheet includes the British newspaper industry, its regulators and the PR machine that supplies it. Davies's title defines what he sees as lies, distortions and propaganda, all accepted without question. High-minded journalists tend to dislike their grubby trade much more than bankers hate banking, say, or teachers teaching. They also have better platforms. Davies is an award-winning Guardian reporter with a distinguished record in investigative journalism. There are few more qualified dog-eaters around.

Article continues
Davies unmuzzled deplores the rise of 'churnalism'; the quick-turnover dross peddled by hacks less scrupulous or fortunate than him. Costs are being cut and standards eroded by greedy proprietors. Hidden persuaders are manipulating truth. At its worst, the modern newsroom is a place of bungs and bribes, whose occupants forage illicitly for scoops in databases and dustbins. Newspapers hold others to account while hushing up their own unsavoury methods. Self-regulation does not always offer fair (or any) redress to citizens who have had lies written about them. Stories are often pompous, biased or plain wrong. Some close scrutiny is not only legitimate: it is overdue.

Much of Davies's analysis is fair, meticulously researched and fascinating, if gloomy. Contrary to what he implies, though at least some regional papers are excellent at fostering young talent. Nor is his paean to 'old-style reporting' convincing to anyone recalling how traditional Fleet Street hands were frequently befuddled by incompetence or drink or both. It seems elitist, too, that Davies has chiefly confined his study to upmarket papers because 'nobody needs a book to tell them that tabloids are an unreliable source of information about the world'.

Why then, one wonders, do newspapers like Davies's borrow so many of their stories from the red-top press? Still, these are minor worries. The main obstacle Davies faces is that any self-appointed guardian of truth must be above reproach. Of course, as he allows, he will make some errors, especially in a book as ambitious as this. But any occupant of the moral ground must meet his own high standards. Does Davies? The test lies in his three concluding chapters on specific newspapers. The first concerns the Sunday Times and the lapses of its Insight team under Andrew Neil. The third, entitled 'Mail Aggression', asserts that the paper scaremongers on immigration and that the editor, Paul Dacre, is prone to shout rude words at his staff. The first charge is correct, in my view, and the second so much-repeated that it is probably true.

Davies is wrong, however, to suggest that the Mail's investigation of Stephen Lawrence's murder, a campaign of courage and commitment, was purely based on the rumour that Stephen's father had once done some work on Dacre's house. In the section analysing Dacre's character, an unnamed employee alleges that he has 'the biggest office in the universe; you sink into the shagpile; he's got a desk like Napoleon'. I am no expert on Napoleonic workstations, but I can confirm that Dacre's desk appears normal and his carpet, last time I looked, had cropped tufts. These are tiny quibbles, but such misleading details convey a false impression of vulgar opulence.

The most controversial chapter, however, is devoted to this newspaper. Davies focuses chiefly on the run-up to the Iraq war, which The Observer supported, so enraging many liberal readers as well, no doubt, as staff on its sister title and Davies's employer, the Guardian. He is especially scathing of the former editor, Roger Alton, and its executive news editor, Kamal Ahmed. Both recently left the paper, as did I.

I agree with Davies that The Observer should not have backed the war and that it took its views too often and too unquestioningly from Downing Street. But other accusations are, at the least, debatable and in some cases wrong. To imply that Alton tried to delay or block a story that the US had planned to bug UN Security Council members is simply untrue. The leak, supplied by whistleblower Katharine Gunn, was one of the paper's finest scoops and the senior executives most involved in the story say that Alton 'behaved impeccably'.

Nor is it true that six executives blew their chance, at a leader conference held in Alton's absence, to swing the paper away from backing war. Several of the group, of whom I was one, had tried for many weeks to do exactly that. We had not persuaded Alton that Blair's adventure had no basis in justice, nor cover in law. No doubt that was our collective failure. But editorial lines are decided by the editor, not by committee. There was not a hope in hell that The Observer's position could have been reversed that day against Alton's wish.

The more disturbing aspects of his attack revolve round human detail. Ahmed, for example, is damned for uttering several remarks that, if he ever made them, were offered in jest. The starker criticism is reserved for Alton, who is painted as a blunderer, too naive or airheaded to grasp politics. Almost all of Alton's staff would attest to his sly, dry wit, his acute political sense, his humour and his ability to sustain the pretence that he understood less than everyone else in the room while actually knowing much more.

Balance is always difficult in such a passionately argued book as this. Thus, while Davies is careful to point out that not all journalists are lazy, credulous or bent, the exceptions go largely unexplored. The Observer, he concedes, was not subject to 'Stalinist censorship', but there is scant mention of the myriad anti-war news stories or the columns, of which, in my experience, Alton never sought to change a word or soften an attack on his editorial line. The many voices of protest included Observer columnists Henry Porter, Avi Shlaim and former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, whose contributions ensured that readers were not, as Davies says, 'soaked in disinformation'. Which is presumably why, livid as many were, they kept on reading.

Many of Davies's arguments are powerful and timely, if unduly pessimistic. British papers, for all their faults, have much left to commend them. But yes, their grasp on truth and honesty is sometimes frail, which makes Davies's exposure of murky practices both welcome and important. The puzzle is why a dispassionate investigation of a flawed trade gets so personal. It is a pity, because the sound that lingers is not a call for truth. It is the bone-crunch of dog devouring dog.

· Mary Riddell has written for many British newspapers. Until recently she was a columnist on The Observer and also wrote for the Daily Mail. She now has a column in the Telegraph

[TonyGosling]

Did anyone else miss this in the Indie? Former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two "black propaganda specialists" from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through "editors and writers who work with us from time to time".

How the spooks took over the news

In his controversial new book, Nick Davies argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale



Independent - Monday, 11 February 2008

On the morning of 9 February 2004, The New York Times carried an exclusive and alarming story. The paper's Baghdad correspondent, Dexter Filkins, reported that US officials had obtained a 17-page letter, believed to have been written by the notorious terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi to the "inner circle" of al-Qa'ida's leadership, urging them to accept that the best way to beat US forces in Iraq was effectively to start a civil war.

The letter argued that al-Qa'ida, which is a Sunni network, should attack the Shia population of Iraq: "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis."

Later that day, at a regular US press briefing in Baghdad, US General Mark Kimmitt dealt with a string of questions about The New York Times report: "We believe the report and the document is credible, and we take the report seriously... It is clearly a plan on the part of outsiders to come in to this country and spark civil war, create sectarian violence, try to expose fissures in this society." The story went on to news agency wires and, within 24 hours, it was running around the world.

There is very good reason to believe that that letter was a fake – and a significant one because there is equally good reason to believe that it was one product among many from a new machinery of propaganda which has been created by the United States and its allies since the terrorist attacks of September 2001.

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news. I've spent the last two years researching a book about falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media.

The "Zarqawi letter" which made it on to the front page of The New York Times in February 2004 was one of a sequence of highly suspect documents which were said to have been written either by or to Zarqawi and which were fed into news media.

This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

Like the new propaganda machine as a whole, the Zarqawi story was born in the high tension after the attacks of September 2001. At that time, he was a painful thorn in the side of the Jordanian authorities, an Islamist radical who was determined to overthrow the royal family. But he was nothing to do with al-Q'aida. Indeed, he had specifically rejected attempts by Bin Laden to recruit him, because he was not interested in targeting the West.

Nevertheless, when US intelligence battered on the doors of allied governments in search of information about al-Q'aida, the Jordanian authorities – anxious to please the Americans and perhaps keen to make life more difficult for their native enemy – threw up his name along with other suspects. Soon he started to show up as a minor figure in US news stories – stories which were factually weak, often contradictory and already using the Jordanians as a tool of political convenience.

Then, on 7 October 2002, for the first time, somebody referred to him on the record. In a nationally televised speech in Cincinnati, President George Bush spoke of "high-level contacts" between al-Q'aida and Iraq and said: "Some al-Q'aida leaders who fled Afghanistan, went to Iraq. These include one very senior al-Q'aida leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks."

This coincided with a crucial vote in Congress in which the president was seeking authority to use military force against Iraq. Bush never named the man he was referring to but, as the Los Angeles Times among many others soon reported: "In a speech [on] Monday, Bush referred to a senior member of al-Q'aida who received medical treatment in Iraq. US officials said yesterday that was Abu al Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian, who lost a leg during the US war in Afghanistan."

Even now, Zarqawi was a footnote, not a headline, but the flow of stories about him finally broke through and flooded the global media on 5 February 2003, when the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, addressed the UN Security Council, arguing that Iraq must be invaded: first, to stop its development of weapons of mass destruction; and second, to break its ties with al-Q'aida.

Powell claimed that "Iraq today harbours a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab al Zarqawi"; that Zarqawi's base in Iraq was a camp for "poison and explosive training"; that he was "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Q'aida lieutenants"; that he "fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago"; that "Zarqawi and his network have plotted terrorist actions against countries, including France, Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany and Russia".

Courtesy of post-war Senate intelligence inquiries; evidence disclosed in several European trials; and the courageous work of a handful of journalists who broke away from the pack, we now know that every single one of those statements was entirely false. But that didn't matter: it was a big story. News organisations sucked it in and regurgitated it for their trusting consumers.

So, who exactly is producing fiction for the media? Who wrote the Zarqawi letters? Who created the fantasy story about Osama bin Laden using a network of subterranean bases in Afghanistan, complete with offices, dormitories, arms depots, electricity and ventilation systems? Who fed the media with tales of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, suffering brain seizures and sitting in stationery cars turning the wheel and making a noise like an engine? Who came up with the idea that Iranian ayatollahs have been encouraging sex with animals and girls of only nine?

Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group, for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

In the case of British intelligence, you can see this combination of reckless propaganda and failure of oversight at work in the case of Operation Mass Appeal. This was exposed by the former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, who describes in his book, Iraq Confidential, how, in London in June 1998, he was introduced to two "black propaganda specialists" from MI6 who wanted him to give them material which they could spread through "editors and writers who work with us from time to time".

In interviews for Flat Earth News, Ritter described how, between December 1997 and June 1998, he had three meetings with MI6 officers who wanted him to give them raw intelligence reports on Iraqi arms procurement. The significance of these reports was that they were all unconfirmed and so none was being used in assessing Iraqi activity. Yet MI6 was happy to use them to plant stories in the media. Beyond that, there is worrying evidence that, when Lord Butler asked MI6 about this during his inquiry into intelligence around the invasion of Iraq, MI6 lied to him.

Ultimately, the US has run into trouble with its propaganda in Iraq, particularly with its use of the Zarqawi story. In May 2006, when yet another of his alleged letters was handed out to reporters in the Combined Press Information Centre in Baghdad, finally it was widely regarded as suspect and ignored by just about every single media outlet.

Arguably, even worse than this loss of credibility, according to British defence sources, the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to "villainise Zarqawi" glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract "unsponsored" foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media manoeuvres. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q'aida's resistance to the American occupation.

JONATHAN GRUN, EDITOR,PRESS ASSOCIATION

The Press Association's wire service has a long-standing reputation for its integrity and fast, fair and accurate reporting. Much of his criticism is anonymously sourced – which is something we strive to avoid.

ANDREW MARR, BROADCASTER AND JOURNALIST

Thanks to the internet there's a constant source of news stories pumping into newsrooms. Stories are simply rewritten. It produces an airless cycle of information. Papers too rarely have news stories of their own.

IAN MONK, PR

The media has ceded a lot of the power of setting the agenda; the definition of news has broadened to include celebrities and new products (the iPhone is a big story). But I don't join in the hand-wringing or say it's desperate that people outside newspapers have got a say.

JOHN KAMPFNER, EDITOR, NEW STATESMAN

Davies is right to point to the lack of investigative rigour: the primary purpose of journalism is to rattle cages. I was always struck at the extent to which political journalists yearned to be spoon fed. Having said that, I think he uses too broad a brush.

DOMINIC LAWSON, FORMER EDITOR SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

I'm not saying this is a golden age, but there's a strong investigative drive in the British press. A lot of papers put a strong value on such stories. I suspect we're about the most invigilated establishment in Europe.


HEATHER BROOKE, JOURNALIST

It's not entirely true what Davies is saying. In the past, we just got scrutiny from newspapers and now think tanks publish results of investigations. But there's an assumption that the public aren't interested in government, just Amy Winehouse.

FRANCIS WHEEN, JOURNALIST/ AUTHOR

Davies is spot on. It's reasonable that newspapers carry PA accounts of court hearings, but he's right that there's more "churn" now. Reporters don't get out of the office the way they did once – partly a reflection of reduced budgets.

This is an edited extract from "Flat Earth News: an award-winning reporter exposes falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media", published by Chatto & Windus, price £17.99. To order this title for the special price of £16, including postage and packaging, call Independent Books Direct: 08700 798 897

[TonyGosling]

Monday, February 25, 2008

SPIES, LIES & JOURNALISM - review by Kenyon
This weekend I got my copy of Flat Earth News. The publisher was either brave to send me one, or just did not know of my reputation as a scathing reviewer. Chatto & Windus need not be worried though, this is going to be one paen of praise to a very good writer. Nick Davies has ploughed his pen at the Guardian and other papers, so he is able to give us a glimpes into what happens in the newsroom. It's as if a reporter went undercover to cover reporters.
To those of you in the hemp movement, the story of Hearst and his dishonest methods will be no surprise, and there is no need to enter at large upon that here. There is a need, however, to look at what is happening in the press today. Davies' book, published this month in London, is shaking up Fleet Street. It has already sold out twice, and there are a number of hacks already trying to downplay its significance. They like to out others, but boy oh boy do they whinge when the light is shone upon themselves! The Pharisees never cried so loud.
It starts off with a view of a non-event, the New Years Eve party in 1999, when so many journalists wasted their time waiting for the 200 bug to wipe out civilisation. It never did. But for months, these guys had been scaring the public by reprinting PR releases from firms that were making a mint out of 2000 bug scare stories. It was an industry which used the press to its own advantage; not, however, a unique scenario, Davies points out that this is a ubiquitous practice.
In the 2nd chapter we get a look at the newsroom and the art of 'churnalism', which is a mix of robot-like plagiarism and failure to check facts. Reuters, Associated Press and the Press Association (in the UK) feed the local hacks a mix of news and propaganda, which is then fed to the massses to suck up. He quotes a character on the Simpsons: "Journalists used to question the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary treat of misinformation and poop it into the diaper we call the six 0'clock news."
There are less journalists in the local rags to cover more news these days, some writing, or plagiarising, 10 articles a day. In some cases, real stories get overlooked because they require too much work, or the victim is black, or the story is too controversial. This becomes more apparent in the 3rd chapter, which talks about the suppliers, or, as they are called, 'grocers'. He notes (p. 85) that there are signs of a surge in secretly organised propaganda which has occured since the terrorist attacks of 11 Sep 2001. "The common element is the ease with which clever outsiders can manipulate the now vulnerable media", he asserts, and how correct he is! This thought it well backed up, Davies quotes no less an authority than Edward Bernays, the founding father of PR: "The conscious an intelligent manipulation of the organied habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who pull the wires which control the public mind."
Contrasting all this, Davies notes examples of journalists who tried to commit journalism. Some of them are now dead, e.g., Gary Webb and Anna Politkovskaya. One who tried to run a story about US troops murdering hundreds of civilians got pushed out of the ranks. Both Webb and Politkovskaya had written about their governments' complicity in crime. Little wonder, then, that I have had the phone go dead after calling the Independent and other papers with leads on such information. At that paper in particular, I have had strange experiences, especially in dealing with them on the US extradition story. At one point they insisted they 'guaranteed an interest' in an interview with Ian Norris, who committed no crimes in his tenure at Morgan Crucible, yet was under threat of extradition to the US for acts which were completely legal. Much as I felt that the paper was trying to get the story only to kill it at the behest of US intel agencies, I agreed to set up the interview. It ran rather well, and then, for no reason at all, was killed. They have for two years now refused to run it, much to the sorrow of all parties involved, including their own reporter, Genevieve Roberts, who has since quit.
Roberts, like thousands of very qualified writers, has joined the ranks of ex-journalists. The situation looks bleak, and there are specific reasons which are well worth noting, not just for the body of reporters now out-of-work, but for the public in general. Not only are they getting important stories suppressed, and the US extradition issue is a top concern - certainly of greater interest than the Naomi Campbell story that the Independent gave space to the week of the Norris interview - they are getting lied to by conmen and intel agents. As a case in point of the former, Davies recounts how Rupert Murdoch was made to look the fool after a certain Mr Josephs bilked him out of his dosh with a fairy tale about who killed Jimmy Hoffa. Even when Murdoch was shown that it was a hoax, he published it, much to his damnation. Of the latter, there is copious evidence in the public domain, yet Davies manages to top it with his own story about the Sunday Times being pushed to suppress a story about Kim Philby and his real role in MI6. In another cloak-and-dagger tale we are given the inside scoop on Mordechai Vanunu, who was taken to London by the Sunday Times only to be kidnapped right out from under them by Mossad, which set the honey trap for him here in London whilst he was a guest of that paper's famous, but now defunct, Insight Team. Murdoch finally got rid of this crew, which was famous for taking months on a caper and diligently checking facts.
Due diligence is seldom to be found in today's press, but utter lies get in all the time. Not surprising then that we have such a barrage of misinformation, some of it complete garbage and plagiarism about global warming. The aforementioned Independent is a leader in this field, and little wonder as it has been so duped - Davies recounts that their Washington bureau had one simple rule: no phone calls! That means no checking, and PR firms can run rough shod over them and other papers who are not diligent. One of the leading voices in that paper for climate change is Johann Hari, whose bitchy rants at times make good reading, but are more to be respected as fiction. Not only do they not do phone calls, they do not do much spell checking, and one of Hari's recent diatribes was an embarrassment to journalism as he could not even spell the name of his subject correctly, when writing of Lady Michele Renouf.
Given the fact that Davies worked for the Guardian, it is no surprising that there is little criticism of that paper; nor is one too surprised to read much of their sister paper, the Observer. Those of us in the UK might recall that recently Alan Rusbridger, editor of the former, got rid of his rival Roger Alton, editor at the latter. However, Alton and crew were badly in need of a course titled journalism 101. It was Alton who put Kamal Ahmed in as political correspondent to Whitehall; Ahmed was like a babe among the wolves there, and they used him mercilessly to plant ridiculous stories. It was he who was so much a part of the suppression of the story that was secretly passed to Yvonne Ridley by an anonymous informant at GCHQ about the NSA bugging UN delegates before the vote on the occupation of Iraq.
Credit does go to the Guardian, however, in their having made some attempt to question the barrage of stories about al-Zarqawi, who the US was trying to make out to be the next bin Laden. The US efforts were ridiculous, and at this point the book becomes light-hearted comedy' except, of course, for the citizens of Iraq who are suffering as a consequence.
But do any in the forth estate really worry about the victims of their lies and distortions? Not often, but at times they themselves are the victims, as when Times reporters tried to get to the truth about the SAS shootings of suspected IRA terrorists; MI6 would plant stories with the editors, and the reporters would have their stories changed so as to suit the MI6 version of events. The reporters complained and insisted on seeing copy before printing, but even this was denied them in a dishonest manner. Davies notes the fact that there was an overall demise at the Times after Murdoch acquired it in 1981, which he bought at a knock-down price after mysterious striked at the paper. The former owner, Lord Thomson, was a lion who stood up to the intel agencies and governemnt, especially in the Philby affair.
This is quite a tome; it could, I am sure, go on for hundreds more pages, and for those of us working in the hemp movement, we could add quite a few of our own chapters. One issue I might have with Davies is his omission of any mentions of William Rodriguez, the hero of 9/11; after all, we did invite the Guardian to come and hear him many times in London, but maybe ther never got to his desk. He may well also be honestly ignorant of the fact that the BBC ran a broadcast on 11 Sep. 2001 at 5pm EST about Building 7 having just fallen. It did indeed fall that day, but not until some 20 minutes later. The journalist, Jane Standley, did not so much as turn her head to see if the story was true, maybe she was trained at the Indepedent and remembered the 'no phone calls' rule; it is one of the weirdest broadcasts of all time. When I asked Richard Porter of the BBC here in London why it happened, and why the archival footage of it mysteriously disappeared, he had no answer, and said it would not be wire to put Standley forward to answer for any of it. When asked where he got such information in advance, and why the Standley report was full of deliberate misinformation about the building's fall and the structure of it, he was quick to beg off. Did the CIA supply this story? We may not have an answer to that one, but we do now have in hand a highly important book that points to other cases of CIA/MI6 involvement in the press.
Well done Davies, you are rocking the boat and making waves. I recommend to everyone that they buy this book, read it, and then put pressure on papers like the Independent to get their heads out of the sand.

Flat Earth News, London, Chatto & Windus, 2008. ISBN 978-0-701-18145-1. 408 pp., printed on Forest Stewardship Council approved paper (but still not hemp!)

http://hempforvictory.blogspot.com/2008/02/spies-lies-journalism-this- weekend-i.html

[blackbear]

Don't fence us in
Nick Davies says certain inconvenient facts are off limits to the modern 'churnalist'. We must hope he is wrong
Inayat Bunglawala

Nick Davies' new book, Flat Earth News, has an impressive range of endorsements listed on its front and back covers.

If you read newspapers, you must read this book" (John Humphrys)

A must read for anyone worried about journalism - which, on this analysis, should be everyone (Ian Hislop)

This brilliant book ... unrelenting in its research, ruthless in its honesty, is a landmark exposé by a courageous insider" (John Pilger)

This is an exceptionally important book which should be read, reread and inwardly digested by all reporters, editors and proprietors ... if even half the charges levelled by Nick Davies are true, this is a morally bankrupt profession which is in desperate need of fundamental reform" (Peter Oborne).

Well, what's it all about? In a nutshell, Nick Davies - an investigative journalist who writes for the Guardian - argues that the corporate takeover of many of our national newspapers, and the resulting logic of commerce, mean journalists have less time than ever to check their facts and go out and find real news stories, and are increasingly prone to simply recycling wire copy and PR material.

Enlisting the help of researchers from Cardiff University, Davies examined the output of our four quality nationals (the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times and Independent) and the influential mid-market Daily Mail. They found that 60% of domestic news stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material, while a further 20% contained clear elements of wire copy and/or PR material. In only 1% of these stories was the source accurately identified; in the rest of the cases, they went under various misleading bylines such as "by a staff reporter". Is this problematic? Yes, says Davies, because it means that:

...the global mass media are not merely prone to occasional error but are constitutionally and constantly vulnerable to being infected with falsehood, distortion and propaganda.

For several decades during the cold war, Davies informs us, the largest media organisation in the world was actually the one run covertly by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States. Across the world, newspaper owners, editors and reporters were recruited on to the CIA payroll. The CIA established phoney front companies to take a controlling stake in newspapers, magazines, radio stations and news agencies. It funded various "thinktanks" to churn out high-profile "research" designed to promote US interests. And now, according to Davies, after the 9/11 attacks, the CIA is busy rebuilding those propaganda networks and working alongside the Pentagon machinery. It has made clear it wants to "dominate the information battlespace" with "information operations" being officially declared as a new "core competency" and designated the fifth arm of the US military, with the same status as army, navy, the air force and special operations.

In addition to becoming increasingly reliant on wire agencies and PR outfits, and vulnerable to manipulation by intelligence services, many journalists also learn to avoid what Davies terms "electric fences".

... the most potent electric fence in the world is the one erected on behalf of the Israeli government. Journalists who write stories which offend the politics of the Israeli lobby are subjected to a campaign of formal complaints and pressure on their editors; most of all, they are inundated with letters and emails which can be extravagant in their hostility ... The result is that some facts become dangerous: to report Palestinian casualties; to depict the Palestinians as victims of Israeli occupation; to refer to the historical ousting of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes; to refer to the killing of Palestinian civilians by Zionist groups in the 1940s. The facts are there, but the electric fence will inflict pain on any reporter who selects them.

And what is the outcome of all this pressure? Two extensive surveys have found that the BBC - our most important broadcaster by far - routinely gives more airtime to Israeli voices than Palestinian ones; and, perhaps unsurprisingly, more viewers and radio listeners in the UK have come to believe that it is actually the Palestinians who are occupying Israeli land rather than vice versa.

Is the situation redeemable? Well, Davies writes a rather gloomy epilogue concluding with the assessment: "I fear the illness is terminal." We really have to hope he is wrong.

Enjoy the comments:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/inayat_bunglawala/2008/02/dont_fen ce_us_in.html

[outsider]

There has been a good deal of speculation (justified, IMO) that Nick Davies is a Mossad asset, particularly over the Maxwell and Vanunu cases.

[TonyGosling]

Have you read the book?
This seems like the nastiest kind of disinformation Outsider.
So let's have some links, evidence, source; at the very least.

[outsider]

[TonyGosling]

Sounds to me like a sting operation to REMOVE Nick from The Mirror - good to know what all these black budgets go on.

[outsider]

[TonyGosling]

That is precisely why he can't be trusted - Nick Davies is well recognised as one of the most highly respected voices of independent journalism in the UK and as such will be the target of all sorts of disinfo.

Of which this is a perfect example.

Now read this book before wasting our time again on this one because it is the only book which exposes the structural diabolical weaknessses in the British press whioch allowed the propaganda coup which was 9/11 to happen.

READ the book.

[scubadiver]

I've read it, my dad has read it and my mum has read it.

[TonyGosling]

Guardian Journalist Nick Davies talks Flat Earth News and State Misinformation with Kim Hill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8YGmASiZZ8

'The Media Accused' - LEWIS PR event with Nick Davies

Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr5982n_G1o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPbXSKEnCUc

PR vs Journalism: Introduction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vca-uCDFBC0

[Disco_Destroyer]

Who owns the Gardian? Is it United Newspapers or somesuch?
If he (Nick Davies) is saying this stuff and still employed what does this infer?
Are the broardsheets waking up to the publics needs or are they still hiding the truth about their masters?

[conspiracy analyst]

PR agencies for news stories are identical to marketing departments for corporations products. Eating chocolate makes you look like a model, listening to stories about babies being buried in the desert makes you think Saddam was the devil.

Stories based on lies becomes 'news', and 'discussion' occurs regarding what fake story the PR agencies promote on behalf of their paymasters.

Journalists therefore become just office boys regurgigating Reuters news reports like the story of the fall of Tower 7 prior to it happening as if it is news, as they never leave the office anymore. When journalists do get 'independent' they file 'an eye-witness account' like the famous case of the New York Times

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair

Notice how they all are into PR-including Browns wife and the daughter of the 'marxist' historian Hobsbawm.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/journalists-turn-on-pr-doyenne s-media-agency-472985.html

The dominance of PR in every aspect of all news has now been event documented for the McCann issue and missing Madeleine...

http://www.thesargeants.net/dblog/articolo.asp?articolo=179

What therefore is news?

[TonyGosling]

Media Workers Against The War | Moazzam Begg | Eamonn McCann | Nick Davies

Final Plenary Session of the conference:
UNDER SIEGE: ISLAM WAR AND THE MEDIA


Link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHIYNITE2Bw

[QuitTheirClogs]

Operation Mass Appeal

[outsider]

[IanFantom]

It's an amazing book.

[Nickdavies]

There are two British journalists called Nick Davies. The one who was accused of working for Mossad spent his career on the Daily Mirror, became foreign editor, got very close to Robert Maxwell and then lost his job in a mass of allegations. He has nothing to do with the other Nick Davies - that's me, the one who wrote Flat Earth News, exposing falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media. I'm about ten years younger than the other guy, have spent my career on the Guardian and at World In Action, have never been accused of working for Mossad or any other bunch of spooks. Same name, same profession - two completely different, unrelated people. And I guess you can understand that I get a bit worried when people confuse us like this.

Good luck,


Nick (the younger)

[Thermate911]

Good clarification, Nick. Much needed here sometimes. Especially when dealing with the MIx rabbit hole vis-a-vis the press. A comment from you about some of Henry Makow's recent claims wouldn't go amiss...
http://www.henrymakow.com/mi-5_and_mi-6_wreak_havoc_for.html

But I cannot help wondering why you still work for the Guardian. Perhaps, like the Liberation Jesuits, it's a case of outwaiting and outwitting the opposition?

The day the Guardian puts the 9/11 quandary on its front page, we'll know 'your side' has won.

Great to have you here. Thanks for posting.

[outsider]

[outsider]

[Thermate911]

Re: Makow. I was rather hoping to remain 'impartial' until someone else who's brushed with the cesspit put a word in. ;-)

Smokescreen for Detroux & Franklin type sewage?

IMO, there's nothing so rewarding as getting an insight into the minds arrayed against us...

[outsider]

Here is a list of Council for Foreign Relations members in top levels of media, compiled by G. Edward Griffin in his article 'The Quigley Formula' in Republic Magazine, Issue 11:

Now in the media, a pretty important place to be, if you want to control public opinion, we find CFR members in management and operational positions at the following media corporations: The Army Times, Associated Press, Association of American Publishers, Barons, Boston Globe, Business Week, Christian Science Monitor, Dallas Morning News, Detroit Free Press, Detroit News, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, San Diego Union Tribune, Times Mirror, Random House, WW Norton and Company, Warner Books, American Spectator, Atlantic, Harpers, Farm Journal, Financial World, Insight,
Washington Times, Medical Tribune, National Geographic, National Review, The New Republic, New Yorker, Newsday, NewsMax, Newsweek, Pittsburg Post Gazette, Reader’s Digest, Rolling Stone, Scientific American, Time Warner, Time,
US News & World Report, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, PBS, RCA, and the Walt Disney Company. Did we leave anybody out? I don’t think so.

The media personalities, the talking heads - not so important, yet still important: David Brinkley, Tom Brokaw, William Buckley, Peter Jennings, Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, Katie Couric, and Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan (and by the way, Alan Greenspan, in case you were wondering, former chairman of The Federal Reserve System, is a member of the CFR).

[outsider]

In 'How the Spooks Stole the News', Nick is quoted above by Tony Gosling as writing:
'Arguably, even worse than this loss of credibility, according to British defence sources, the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to "villainise Zarqawi" glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract "unsponsored" foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media manoeuvres. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q'aida's resistance to the American occupation.'

This indicates Nick goes along with the 'bin Laden Myth'.

[IanFantom]

I, too, was wondering when 9/11 would crop up whilst reading 'Flat Earth News'. But by the time I got to the end, I had come round to the idea that if it had been me, I'd have done exactly the same.

By keeping the issues to more generally accepted untruths Nick Davies kept the focus on the topic of the book: the untruthfulness of the press. A chapter on 9/11 would have turned it into a 'conspiracy theorist' book in the eyes of those would be likely to believe the reviews.

'Flat Earth News' has great credibility. It is much more useful to the cause of truth than a book that tries to break too much new ground in getting the truth out.

It's our job now to say to people: "Now look at 9/11".

[outsider]

Chomsky too does a fine job of attacking US foreign interventions, but dismally 'fails' on the big one, the KEY to exposing the NWO for what they are.
We don't have long; in my opinion we have lost already. Martial Law is aroound the corner; we don't have time to pussyfoot around.

If you check my earlier post on media and the CFR, you'll see they have the thing sown up. We have to go for the jugular, while we still have the freedom of the net.

No amount of foreign wars, with their tremendous loss of life (1.3 million plus Iraquis reported dead since invasion (Information Clearing House)) will stir the public to revulsion, like the realisation that their government and home-grown and allied behind-the-scenes manipulators committed 9/11.
We know that to be fact; we must awaken as many people as possible to that truth, by informing them and asking that they research the issue themselves, to find out for themselves that that is what happened.

[rodin]

[outsider]

@ Rodin: 'Sunday Times obviously invited MOSSAD in.'

Quite possibly; but Peter Hounam, who broke the story, would have had no part in it.
His attitude to Israel and the truth is demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt in his brilliant book on the murderous Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, 'Operation Cyanide'. He has also been a staunch campaigner for Mordechai's release.

(see also videos 'Dead in the Water' and 'Loss of Liberty', both available to watch on line).

[acrobat74]

Nice thread folks.

The head of counter-intelligence at CIA had a spook right under his nose for years. So it's not really worth trying to figure out who's who...on a web forum.

Nevertheless, there exists a clear distinction between those employing the scientific method, and those who confuse bias-reinforcing conjecture with truth.