As the name implies, the session was essentially focused on Nick Davies’ book titled “Flat Earth News,” which somewhat paints a grim picture of the dwindling prospects of the print media, particularly in the UK and also the world in general.

There is the belief that the book is likely to change, permanently, the views that readers have of the British newspaper industry.

A down-to-earth Davies did not mince words as he addressed the well-attended session.

He stated that journalism was all about telling the truth; gathering evidence (including scientific evidence) and cross checking them for facts.

He likened the situation to the false belief many years ago that the earth was flat and not spherical, saying that journalism had been turned upside down as falsehood and propaganda stories were now the order of the day in the print media.

Due to some emerging scenarios such as the influence of business on the media, dwindling revenue and the Internet, “we are structurally likely to produce stories with falsehood and propaganda,” he declared.

According to him, newsrooms have been injected with commercialism. Cost-cutting in organisations has resulted in fewer journalists in employment and those remaining are overworked and unable to give their best and do the work properly.

Consequently, journalists resort to sitting at their desk, recycling old stories and relying solely on slanted press releases. He was particular about the fact that journalists and editors recycle or rely on press releases without fact-checking before publication.

He said that the book is part of the outcome of a 1984-induced study that measured the amount of space being filled by the average newspaper journalist, who he said now fills three times as much space as in 1984.

He said publications such as The Guardian, Independent, Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail were sampled in that study as well as another, revealing 12% of stories showed evidence of not being fact-checked and 80% were from second hand/PR material.

“We now allow weird people to write their news and then fail to check for facts,” he lamented, adding that wire services were also cutting number of staff and increasingly becoming unreliable sources of news.

“They can’t tell the whole truth because they do not know what is happening themselves; low budgetary allocation has ensured that network stringers are no longer available as was the case before; and foreign news has been destroyed by forces of commercialism.”

Reacting to a question, Davies stressed that the average journalist doesn’t necessarily have to agree with a press officer in terms of the thrust of the story in the press statement. “A good journalist should be able to do his/her end of the job properly.”

He predicted that PR materials in newspapers would increase in years to come and warned that journalism as a profession was in danger of extinction, due to the emergence of the internet, free news sites and aggregate news coverage sites like Google News; and declining circulation courtesy of free websites.

Reacting to another question, he said he would rather consider structural pressure on the journalist and not put the blame on personal failings. According to him, the journalist who chooses to sit at his/her desk to rely on wire material is probably not being motivated enough.

In another reaction, he saw nothing wrong with media houses receiving money from funding organisations for assistance, as long as the media firm’s editorial policy remained uninfluenced.

On the role of the freelancer, Davies commented that despite the importance of freelancers in the industry, freelancer budgets were also shrinking and that the prospects were not looking good.

He gave the thumbs up to a Canadian scenario of monetising information assets whereby excess information is repackaged and sold for funds used to finance the media organisation’s operations.

Michael Ohioze Simire