British writer Nick Davies is an inspiration to a lot of young journalists, and rightly so (you can read more of his writing on social issues here). But now he has moved from covering drugs and criminal justice to report on journalism. And in doing so, he commissioned some research to back up his criticisms and analysis.
Here is how Nick summed up that research in November 2007:
The academics did two things. Year by year they looked at what happened to the editorial staffing levels of those Fleet Street papers over the next 20 years. The second thing they did was they measured the space which those editorial staff were filling, how many column inches of news.
You crunch all those numbers for all these companies and you come up with something that is really important – essentially, your average Fleet Street reporter now is filling three times as much space as he or she was 20 years ago. Turn that round, look at it from the reporter’s point of view: we only have one third of the time to do our job.
Is this bald claim really true? The study links full-time employees to pagination.
But what about:
- freelance employees?
- bought-in copy?
- the amount of agency material used?
- changes in technology?
- the reduction in the number of editions?
Could any of these things have a bearing on the analysis? And shouldn’t journalists be more productive? What about these innovations:
- electronic databases
- computers
- mobile telephony
- the Internet?
Haven’t these revolutionary changes all made life for journalists quicker and easier in the past 20 years? Shouldn’t we demand that reporters work faster, smarter and produce more given all this?
No cuttings libraries to sift through, no dial to turn on the telephone, or telephone books to wade through. No telex machines to service or wire copy to rip and read.
There is a second strand to Nick’s claims. His says the growth in pages has been fuelled by public relations content:
Where are we going to get our material from? While we’ve been losing our jobs, somebody else has been getting more and more jobs. Which is the PR industry.
Does this sound familiar? Any fans of Michael Schudson will recognise it pretty quickly. Except that, as Schudson explains below, the claim was being made decades ago.
Early in the 20th century, efforts multiplied by businessmen and government agencies to place favorable stories about themselves in the press. A new ‘profession’ of public relations emerged…
By 1920, one journalism critic noted, there were nearly a thousand ‘bureaus of propaganda’ in Washington … Figures circulated among journalists that 50 percent or 60 percent of stories even in the New York Times were inspired by press agents.
The new Pulitzer School of Journalism at Columbia was churning out more graduates for the PR industry than for the newspaper business. The publicity agent, philosopher John Dewey wrote in 1929, ‘is perhaps the most significant symbol of our present social life.’
Journalists grew self-conscious about the manipulability of information in the propaganda age. They felt a need to close ranks and assert their collective integrity in the face of their close encounter with the publicity agents’ unembarrassed effort to use information (or misinformation) to promote special interests…
…‘Many reporters today are little more than intellectual mendicants’, complained political scientist Peter Odegard in 1930, ‘who go from one publicity agent or press bureau to another seeking “handouts”.’
Just before the First World War, New York newspaper editor Don Seitz assembled a list of 1400 press agents for the American Newspaper Publishers Association, distributed the list to ANPA members, and urged them not to accept material for publication from any of them.
But this was a losing battle and by 1926 he complained that the Pulitzer School of Journalism ‘turns out far more of these parasites than it does reporters.’
Actually, Nick’s study finds that only 19 per cent of quality newspaper content is ‘all or mainly’ from PR (p17), so there are grounds for arguing that things have improved in the course of a century. But the PR claim itself is misleading.
After all, what does this PR stuff look like? Here is one of the more ‘heinous’ examples his study cites (I have linked to the originals):
A surprising number of longer print pieces were also coded in the ‘All from PR’ category (although long broadcast items consisting solely of PR copy were very seldom found). For example, a Times story headlined ‘George Cross for Iraq War Hero’ (Michael Evans, The Times, 24th March 2006, p27) is an almost verbatim repetition of a press release issued by the Ministry of Defence.
So Evans’ piece begins:
The blast tore off his left leg at the knee, drove shrapnel into his other limbs and flung the bomb disposal officer high above the Iraqi road.
Despite his injuries, Captain Peter Norton retained the composure to warn his men of another device hidden nearby.
Seven others were spared a similar fate and the bomb disposal officer, 43, from the Royal Logistic Corps, has now been awarded the George Cross for his outstanding bravery and leadership.
He becomes the second serviceman to receive the medal in recognition of action that took place in Iraq.
Captain Norton admitted yesterday that when he realised how badly injured he was he could have “relaxed” and given in to the inevitability of death.
The MoD version?
An Army bomb disposal expert has been awarded the George Cross for his heroic actions in Iraq in 2005. Captain Peter Norton from the Royal Logistic Corps is only the twenty-second member of the Armed Forces to receive the award since 1945.
Captain Norton is one of 70 UK Servicemen and women to be honoured in the latest list for their role in operations around the world, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Northern Ireland, and the former Yugoslavia.
Captain Norton, an Ammunition Technical Officer, receives the George Cross for an act of “the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger in the Al Bayaa district of Baghdad.”
Are we really supposed to believe that this re-write is a grotesque fraud polluting the pool of journalism? I think we are being spun a line.
Incidentally, more than half the PR material in the stories Davies’ criticises actually comes from government, public bodies (police, hospitals, etc.), NGOs and charities (p22). When Andrew Gilligan broke his 45 minutes story he estimated that he appeared on 19 different BBC programmes. Given the range of outlets public PR materials now service, do we really want ministers, police officers and doctors conducting separate interviews with dozens of different publications?
The real filler in newspapers (and online) is wire copy. This is presented as something of a shock and Nick conflates this misleadingly with PR material (at least he does on the Today programme). Actually the only shock is that newspapers have hidden their reliance on the agencies for so long.
However the Associated Press, Reuters and the Press Association are among the most scrupulously regulated news providers in all journalism.
Nick’s jeremiad is familiar to anyone who has thumbed through the literature of reporters critiquing their profession (gosh, even I have a go), but I would argue that his hope for journalism as an agent of change are the real problem. By over-estimating its influence, he falls prey to pessimism, rather than looking at ways in which his goals could be secured by other means.
12 responses to “Arguing against Nick Davies”
Nice analysis. I thought there was something fishy about what he was saying this morning, but I hadn’t had my first coffee yet (or, indeed, got up…) and wasn’t thinking clearly.
There’s enough recognisable journalistic failings in what he cites to be somewhat convincing, but he’s pushing it pretty far.
What did you make of his claims as to illegal activities when researching stories?
Are there really more nefarious practices? Respectable US reporters were ripping open and resealing telegrams at the beginning of the century (a felony).
The interesting about Clive Goodman is that he was shopped thanks to a journalist…
News agencies like AP and PA are also, of course, built for exactly the purpose that seems to be decried: to provide a crutch for media orgs that don’t want to spend their time or resources on a particular story. I don’t always like agency judgment, but it’s not unvetted material that newspapers go out and nicked; they’re owned by the media organisations in order to provide a pool of additional help.
He’s got a point in general (if what he’s saying is “couldn’t journalism be better without all this rubbish”) but how do you get there from here?
Hi Adrian,
Thanks for the commentary. It’s just about the first intelligent, well-informed challenge I’ve encountered. I think the Cardiff research is well-founded and important; and I think the picture which I’m painting of journalists being deprived of the time and resources which they need to do their work effectively, is accurate. But, just for the moment, assume that I’m wrong; pull back and look at the big picture of news media putting out global misinformation on WMD, the millennium bug, non-existent terrorist threats, key facts on which government policy is founded (all the stuff in the opening chapter of Flat Earth News). People outside the media look at that as well as the daily dribble of smaller false stories and often try to explain it by falling back on conspiracy theories, about proprietors or advertisers pressurising us to push out misinformation. For me, that doesn’t cover the ground at all. So my explanation is that this is all about the numerous insidious and destructive ways in which the logic of commercialism has invaded our newsrooms (including the recycling of unchecked second-hand material from PR and wire agencies). But, if that’s wrong, what is the explanation?
Good luck,
Nick
Hi Nick
I’d be more convinced by a long-term analysis of the percentage of agency material appearing in newspapers. Has it gone up considerably as pages have increased? Then you have your point.
There is point on attribution in British journalism (less so in the US). Material should be much better attributed (easy online with links), and fact-checking would be helpful too (altho’ then they had fact-checkers on the New Republic when Stephen Glass wrote for them).
On another level the increased use of PR material could be due to proliferating outlets and the increasingly professional presentation of public information by agencies like govt depts and public bodies. That doesn’t always come with “spin” (e.g. medal citations like the one quoted above).
Equally a lot of the information that is provided is contextualised and altered in the re-packaging process (e.g. the Prince Andrew story today, which is sourced to one interview in the IHT).
Why does so little of the journalism that we as journalists admire appear in newspapers? My answer would be that it’s more related to the economics of product differentiation (Hotelling’s law) than because of pressures on journalists. In other words the answer lies in the marketplace, and less with the producers.
Perhaps we need to learn how to reward discriminating news consumers!
A thought-provoking post and interesting exchange – thanks.
I think there’s some truth in what both Adrian and Nick say, and even in the “elementary truisms” (to quote a Chomskyism) of the propaganda model that sustains many of the conspiracy theories Nick derides – and rightly so, in my opinion, since proponents of this sort of analysis can’t define what “can’t be said”, not least because that’s not how it works, even if there is a tendency to foghorn received wisdom from officialdom and big business (and all sorts of other influences, depending on the newsroom).
I think Nick’s also right to say that something has to account for this. If it’s not Chomskyan filters (too amorphously dogmatic), or the nefarious influence of recycling (too many counterexamples, as Adrian stresses), what is it? Commercial considerations (and the overworked, underresourced hacks assigned to underreported turnaround jobs)?
Probably a bit of all of the above, which (as I understand it, not yet having read the book), is what Nick is effectively arguing.
In my view, the biggest problem this generates is a question of how news becomes contextualised:
“The result is that the government and big business set the news agenda, and shape how stories are framed.”
http://danielsimpson.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/a-cure-for-the-cancer-in-journalism/
I was astounded the first time I entered a national newsroom (in 1997) to see how much of a daily newspaper consisted of rewritten wire copy and press releases. People who’d worked there for years said it didn’t use to be like that. I wasn’t around to know – perhaps more who were might be inclined to say.
Maybe Nick would like to interview some of them and spin out the responses (and much more besides) into a magazine-length investigative feature of the sort Adrian laments we don’t see in newspapers (at least not this side of the Atlantic)?
In other news, you might both be interested in this response:
The unfortunate punchline is that non-career (“independent”) journalists, bloggers, etc, are affected by the same economics of time – unless they’re financially independent (eg well-off). This probably explains, in part, the complete lack of originality in most “independent” media, despite its freedom from corporate ownership. Copy-n-pasted “news” and recycled ideas (predominantly sub-Chomskyan) seem to be the rule – and I say this as someone who still sees the utopian promise of the internet.
http://www.mediahell.org/community/08020603.htm
Daniel says:
“If it’s not Chomskyan filters (too amorphously dogmatic), or the nefarious influence of recycling (too many counterexamples, as Adrian stresses), what is it? Commercial considerations (and the overworked, underresourced hacks assigned to underreported turnaround jobs)?”
“Chomskyan”? Poor Ed Herman – for he is the originator of the propaganda model, not Noam Chomsky (as he freely and frequently points out).
So there are five news filters in the model. And, yes, “commercial considerations” are accounted for (pace Daniel) in at least the first two (ownership, advertising). And in the third (sources). Arguably even the fourth (flak).
Airily waving away Herman’s news filters as “too amorphously dogmatic” sounds impressive but cuts no mustard.
Poor Ed Herman – for he is the originator of the propaganda model…
Poor Felix, if he thinks invoking Herman (a model of propaganda recycling, Serbian stylee) somehow enhances the five “elementary truisms” he sets such store by.
Perhaps, Felix, you’d like to define, with supporting evidence, how each of these filters determines daily journalistic output, accounting of course for the myriad occasions when they don’t. (Hint: you don’t need a “model” to say most media are more like tame mouthpieces for the authorities than agents of revolutionary change.)
In other words, can you spell out what “can’t be said”, and when, where and why?
If so, I wish you luck weaning ardent propaganda modelists off their devotion to amorphous dogmatism – the likes of Media Lens are only really interested in manufacturing dissent.
Brgds,
Daniel
You can find all the supporting evidence and spelling out that’s needed in ‘Manufacturing Consent’.
And if you don’t agree, nobody’s stopping you from writing your own book to demolish their arguments. Good luck. Nobody’s managed it so far.
What’s to demolish, exactly? That’s the problem with the propaganda model: it’s not a model in any meaningful sense. Just a (non-exhaustive) list of reasons why news isn’t on the whole written with anti-establishment spin.
The most insightful lines of Manufacturing Consent come in the preface (p. xv of my edition):
“That a careful reader looking for a fact can sometimes find it with diligence and a sceptical eye tells us nothing,” wrote Chomsky and Herman, “about whether that fact received the attention and context it deserved, whether it was intelligible to the reader or effectively distorted or suppressed.”
Constructive critique would seek to disinter these facts from the memory hole and disseminate them more widely by making them the basis for framing stories more accurately.
Of course, everyone’s free to carp, and even to devote their days to “proving” the media’s not only not anti-establishment but even part of its architecture. But where do “radicals” get their news (i.e. the facts they use to make their arguments)? The “awful” corporate media, even if reposted elsewhere.
Sure, they could do a better job of remembering what they’ve reported, instead of contradicting it with spin in subsequent stories. But they do actually dig it up in the first place, which is a whole lot more than “media activists” tend to get round to doing.
I’ve outlined my criticisms of Media Lens at length here, as I think you’re already aware: http://danielsimpson.wordpress.com/2006/04/21/news-as-if-people-mattered/
This is probably the most relevant section:
The problem, then, is essentially one of context. Media Lens and its subscribers berate journalists for pushing facts through an interpretive framework that obscures their significance; for sacrificing analysis on the altar of novelty; for accumulating information without joining up the dots. Editors tend to favour news stories that recycle the idées fixes of conventional wisdom in their presentation of background material. These are regarded as unbiased, while those structured on alternative interpretations arouse suspicion. Newspapers consequently devote forests of column inches to supposed scepticism, which takes as its starting point the premises of those it purports to challenge. This “feigned dissent”, according to Edwards and Cromwell, is the stock-in-trade of liberal commentators, whose heft and vigour belie their conformity to established opinion. More outspoken dissidents, whether opinionated reporters like the Independent’s Robert Fisk, or investigative columnists like George Monbiot at the Guardian, survive in pockets, but they don’t get to take editorial decisions. As such, the Media Lens editors argue, they may do more harm than good. “Dissident appearances in the mainstream act as a kind of liberal vaccine,” they assert, “inoculating against the idea that the media is subject to tight restrictions and control.”
This is an absurd claim, predicated on the assumption that there could, even in theory, be any such thing as a truly free press. The repeated references to this holy grail suggest, however, that it is necessarily elusive, serving as a kind of Trotskyist transitional demand with a Situationist twist. “Be realistic, demand the impossible,” as the sloganeers of 1968 would have it. Or, more bluntly: “No replastering, the structure is rotten”, as if it might somehow crumble of its own accord once enough people noticed. Chomsky and Herman’s propaganda model identified five filters distorting media coverage: the interests of parent companies, pressure from advertisers, dependence on official sources, flak from the government and other powerful lobbies and an ideological belief in free-market capitalism. Media Lens seeks to raise awareness of these issues by demonstrating that there are limits to what many journalists are prepared to discuss. More honest reporting is impossible, Edwards and Cromwell argue, unless the filters blurring their vision are removed. “We cannot change the mass media,” they write, “until we change the culture, which cannot change until we change the mass media.” Their objective is to lobby for a revolutionary restructuring of society by highlighting flaws in journalism, which they ascribe to an all-encompassing theory passed off as axiomatic fact. In effect, then, they are manufacturing dissent.
None of which means that official spin doesn’t get recycled more often than refuted (at least in the framing of background).
But you don’t need a “model” to tell you that. And the one you’re talking up not only fails to explain why specific reports take the form they do, it’s consequently useless as a guide to potential solutions (as a quick scan of “non-corporate” media reveals – see above).
Essentially, it’s just a device, used for rhetorical purposes, presumably in pursuit of progress of some kind. Frankly, I find myself agreeing (to my horror) with Andrew Marr – the model’s proponents argue perniciously and their animus is anti-journalistic.
To quote another line from my lengthy screed:
Edwards and Cromwell not only have no answer, they argue it’s unreasonable to expect one. “The highlighting of important issues for discussion is in itself an important and legitimate activity,” they write. This is true, but the discussion has to take place some time. In the meantime, they suggest, Media Lens is an embryonic solution per se, but it is difficult to see how if it only reports on reporting, and does so with dogmatic insistence that the corporate media are irredeemably corrupt. If so, surely action would speak louder than critique, since the only pressure that editors can’t ignore is competition.
Enough already. It’s so much easier to point the finger than get it out…
Best wishes.
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Nice attempt but I am not buying it. 9 years ago I worked for a company that subscribed to a PR service. We would get the PR releases and within a couple of days, the newspaper stories would appear. Many had verbatim text cut and pasted from the PR release. Some where just the PR releases with almost no editing.
Once we started tracking it, it became very clear that a large number of the Biz stories were coming from PR pushes, not from ‘journalism’. A lot of the political stories were coming from PR by NGOs. It is not that all the stories were cut and pasted from PR releases, many were not. But you would see a PR push by say cruise companies and sure enough on Sunday would be a big life style story people taking cruises for vacations. There were real news stories, reports on actual events that occurred, the school board meetings and crime kind of stories, but most non-event stories were driven by PR.
I subscribe to 3 daily and 1 weekly papers. The quality of journalism as declined markedly in the last 20 years. There is very little real information although I can’t tell if that is because the stories are bogus or if it’s the bad writing (the only thing reporters today seem to be good at is burying the lead, if you can even find the lead).
Newspaper are dying because the quality of the journalism is so poor. The internet and Craigslist are just excuses, the how, not the why.