I'm only a two chapters in at the moment, but am enjoying the book Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. While I believe he has rose-tinted glasses for pre-1980s jour

I'm only a two chapters in at the moment, but am enjoying the book Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. While I believe he has rose-tinted glasses for pre-1980s journalism, and his information and analysis is UK-centric, one of his conclusions is apt. The majority of journalists end up spending almost no time generating their own stories, or even checking them. Most of what you read in broadsheet newspapers is just parroting wire services, PR firms, the government, etc. Davies commissioned studies showing only 12% of stories in major broadsheets in 2 random weeks were generated by the journalist, and only 12% of the key facts were checked. He calls this churnalism, and it goes a ways to showing how it is that these institutions set the bounds for "acceptable" discourse, without any conspiracy -- just don't hire enough journalists and make them too busy to do the real work. Eventually the new cohort will think they're doing real work anyway. I should say, I don't know the basis for Davies' critique of wire agencies, or why it is important to generate one's own stories. I haven't read the Suppliers chapter yet.