As part of my dissertation research, I got in touch with Nick Davies, the author of the utterly brilliant book, Flat Earth News. Or, as I like to call it, the “Naive Journalist Destroyer”, as it will eliminate any romantic thoughts you ever had of the industry.
I wonder if, during my two week Sky placement, I will experience Flat Earth News. We’ll see.
Anyway, in the mean time, I thought I’d share some of the answers Nick gave to me. I sent him three pretty specific questions, but his answers cover many issues. Most interesting, I think, are his comments on “Harry’s War” (I’ve made that part bold if you’re in a hurry).
My questions were:
1. BBC Guidelines state that journalists should seek at least two sources for each story. Do you think this is a reasonable stipulation, or should trust be put in journalists to judge the quality of their sources?
2. Harry in Afghanistan: What are your views on this? This seems to me like another case of Flat Earth News; each news outlet we have is relying on the MoD as their source — isn’t this dangerous?
3. My dissertation focuses heavily on the Hutton Report. With the added bonus of hindsight, do you think Andrew Gilligan was right to use David Kelly as his sole source?
Nick’s (unedited) answers:
Generally: If our primary object is to tell the truth, then our primary function is to check, so that we can sort truth from falsehood. Checking means gathering evidence and, for journalists, just like for detectives, there are basically three kinds: human, documentary (which includes paperwork, photos, audio and video), and specialists (eg commissioning a scientific report). In the world of understaffed and overworked newsrooms, that is very rarely possible. And so journalists fall back on compromises, which are dangerous.
The BBC Guidelines call for at least two sources. However….. First, they make an exception for Press Association stories, which can be run without a second source – a very dangerous thing to do since PA commonly runs false stories which they pick up and recycle from press releases and other media outlets. Second, two sources also falls a long way short of checking and can be very problematic. This is because, under current conventions, ‘checking a story’ means picking up (or sometimes making up) an allegation, taking it to ‘the other side’ and asking for a quote. If the allegation happens to be true and even slightly embarrassing, the quote from the other side is highly likely to obscure or at least to dilute the truth: we would be better to find the truth and stick to it without running a contradictory quote. If the allegation is false, then, unless it is dangerously libellous, the quote from the other side is used as an excuse to run it into the paper as part of a spuriously balanced story: we would be better to dump the falsehood all together.
What worries me about the Harry story is the instant assumption by all media outlets of the same angle – Harry the Hero. The reality is that we have no evidence about whether he was brave or not; ever came within spitting distance of an armed enemy. Outsiders could be forgiven for thinking that we are instructed to take up this angle. The frightening thing is that we do it spontaneously. It probably has something to do with the impact of the PR deal with the Palace, but there is also something deeper there, an instinctive recourse to safe, conservative ideas.
Gilligan, and the two other BBC journos who interviewed Kelly (Susan Watts and Gavin Hewitt), were way ahead of their colleagues – they were not sitting waiting for the MoD to tell them what the story was, had found a source and got him to talk. But we know, from evidence submitted to Hutton, that none of them actually tried to gather evidence from him to check the story. For example, they could have asked for copies of the different drafts of the dossier or at least the wording of key clauses. Instead, they took his off-the-record allegations and, following current convention, simply bounced them off a Whitehall press office as a second source. That meant they never got to the truth. It also meant that, in the absence of any evidence, when Gilligan was subjected to aggressive and unfair scrutiny, he had nothing with which to defend his story.
If you haven’t already, get yourself a copy of Flat Earth News. For some more background on the book (and a great blog too), visit www.flatearthnews.net.
