Nick Davies - Is the earth still flat?

Last week I was reading an interview in PR Week with the journalist and author Nick Davies.

Davies wrote the controversial book 'Flat Earth News' which came out in 2008 which set out to expose in his words the 'mechanics of falsehood, distortion and propaganda' in the production of news within the media.

I read the book almost immediately after it was first published. I'd just begun my own journalism training, and unsurprisingly thought it was something I really needed to read.

In the book the PR industry takes a bit of a battering from Davies. The industry comes out looking like an enemy of true journalism. He argues that the demand for PR has increased in regards to the production of news.

With more corporate owners, staff cuts, pressure to find and research stories, PR has taken on a much more important role.

The rise in PR has inadvertently reduced journalism to what Davies describes as 'churnalism'. Essentially a less accurate, less informed form of journalism, sometimes based around simply re-writing press releases. If was interesting to see what he had to say about his book and PR in general.

I remember a few years ago when I was thinking of retraining, my choice was between journalism or PR. After reading the book, Davies reminded me why I chose journalism as he makes it sound like the more noble profession of the two. Journalism is about seeking truth, reporting the facts, and exposing wrong doing.

PR on the other hand, has ironically a more negative image. Flat Earth News presents PR as a more unscrupulous, unreliable, version of the truth. In other words spin!

Obviously it's a lot more complex than that. There's always been good and bad journalism and PR clearly has an important role to perform. It occurred to me that he presents the roles of PRs and journalists as being opposite to each other, they're essentially in conflict.

Davies doesn't seem to have any answers to this conflict between journalism and PR, but I suppose he's raising awareness of the issue, reminding us that journalism still involves trying find the true story behind the PR statements and not immediately excepting PR press releases as factual reporting of the issues. PR is still normally produced to create some form of commercial or political gain, for individuals, businesses and organisations.

Reading some of the comments left at the end of the interview, the one comment which I thought was really important was by Graham Goodkind, Founder of Frank PR. He raised the point that the biggest difference between now and when the book first came out was the impact that social media now has.

Social media is now a new source of information for journalists, and although it can still perform a PR function, it's also about sharing information, having discussions and building communities. Companies and brands can't control what's said about them within the world of social media. As Goodkind says it now acts as counterweight to the problems raised in the book.

I suppose in the journalism/PR divide I've always naturally sided more with journalism, but the two professions need each other in order to perform their roles effectively. They just need to remind each other every so often what it is they're meant to be achieving.