How diverse are the sources of news? There is growing literature on the ‘public relationsalization’ of journalism (see e.g. Aeron Davis 2002). In his provocatively titled critique Flat Earth News, Nick Davies (2009), an award winning journalist with years of experience of working on UK newspapers and television, reported disturbing findings of research commissioned from the journalism department of Cardiff University. The Cardiff researchers, Lewis et al. (2006: 15-16), found that 30 per cent of stories in the newspapers surveyed – The Guardian, Independent, Times, Telegraph and Daily Mail – were all from wire services or other media and a further 19 were mainly from wires or other media. However, only 1 % of stories were directly attributable to PA or other wire services. The research also looked at broadcast news items – namely BBC and ITV evening news, and BBC Radio’s World at One and Today programmes – and found their dependence on wires and other media was less. Nonetheless ‘27 % of [broadcast] news contained material that appeared wholly or mainly derived from wires or other media’. The Cardiff research also found that ‘nearly one in five newspaper stories and 17 % of broadcast stories were verifiably derived mainly or wholly from PR material or activity’ (Lewis et al. 2006: 17). Davies (2009) explained this as part of a decline in journalistic standards linked to commercial pressures. Indeed, the Cardiff research (Lewis et al. 2006) provides strong evidence of a link with employment conditions and in particular the drive for journalistic productivity (see C5 below). The House of Lords Select Committee on Communications (2008a: 19-20) has also expressed concern about a general trend among newspapers to cut the numbers of special correspondents and to rely on agency feed and PR (House of Lords 2008a: 19-20).
Despite commercial pressures that militate against quality news and investigative journalism, widely perceived by journalists and academics alike to be in decline, examples abound. Just a few recent cases from the national quality press serve to underline this point. In 2009 The Guardian’s Ian Cobain won the Paul Foot award for an investigation into British involvement in the torture of terror suspects detained overseas. Another Guardian journalist, Paul Lewis, won the Bevins Prize2 for his reports about the death of Ian Tomlinson during the G20 riots in London, revealing that he died after being struck from behind by a police officer. Perhaps the biggest recent story was The Telegraph’s investigation into how politicians – from cabinet members to backbenchers of all parties – had exploited the system of parliamentary allowances to subsidize their lifestyles and multiple homes.3 In all these cases, the press impressively performed its democratic watchdog function as a result of the work of journalists searching for evidence and not reliant on agency feed or PR.
