I’m just reading the Davies’ book and am being deeply disturbed by it. I suppose it is easy enough to envisage a world of error in journalism; despite our studies there are no doubt errors in all of our news stories - if there weren’t we’d all be getting 100%.
It is unsettling to think that these errors, that I see as a rife in this simple training phase, can carry through to ‘real’ journalism. Davies states that the fall of good and honourable journalism ‘begins with journalists who tell you that the Earth is flat, because genuinely they think it might be so.’
The examples that Davies gives, e.g. The Y2K bug, are startling. Especially when i read through the book and found that even i had not questioned some of those assumptions. The core of rotten journalism is truly ‘ignorance’ and i see how it could be so.
Yet i do not think it unavoidable. Maybe in a world where it is ‘heresy’ to say that the Earth is round there is a pressure and an unknowing submission to agree but this can be changed. [well, maybe not in tabloids but you catch my drift.]
Even when it is difficult to go against the flow there are always some nutters out there who will do everything in their power to ensure that their stories are accurate. [Maybe naively - if i were going to be a journalist that's the kind i'd want to be.]
All these crazy guys have to do is reduce every story to the pure and unadulterated facts. [And when i say facts i mean real facts not everyday assumptions.] Although philosophically there is nothing of use that we can know in a practical world we can at least try.
After all, in the end someone did find out that the Earth was round – so there is hope for us yet.
Katy x
