Flat Earth News cover art

Flat Earth News

 Preview
Try Premium Plus free
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Flat Earth News

By: Nick Davies
Narrated by: Steven Crossley
Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £20.99

Buy Now for £20.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
Switch payment method
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

 When award-winning journalist Nick Davies decided to break Fleet Street's unwritten rule by investigating his own colleagues, he found that the business of reporting the truth had been slowly subverted by the mass production of ignorance.

Working with a network of off-the-record sources, Davies uncovered the story of the prestigious "Sunday" newspaper which allowed the CIA and MI6 to plant fiction in its columns; the newsroom which routinely rejects stories about black people; the respected paper that hired a professional fraudster to set up a front company to entrap senior political figures; the newspapers which support law and order while paying cash bribes to bent detectives.

Davies names and exposes the national stories which turn out to be pseudo events manufactured by the PR industry, and the global news stories which prove to be fiction generated by a new machinery of international propaganda. He shows the effect of this on a world where consumers believe a mass of stories which, in truth, are as false as the idea that the Earth is flat - from the millennium bug to the WMD in Iraq - tainting government policy, perverting popular belief.

With the help of researchers from Cardiff University, who ran a ground-breaking analysis of our daily news, Davies found most reporters, most of the time, are not allowed to dig up stories or check their facts - a profession corrupted at the core.

©2008 Nick Davies (P)2009 WF Howes Ltd Communication & Social Skills Media Studies Personal Development Social Sciences Words, Language & Grammar Writing & Publishing Espionage Thought-Provoking Refugee Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 How They Broke Britain cover art
The Conspiracy Tourist cover art
935 Lies cover art
Truth in Our Times cover art
The Making of Modern Britain cover art
Traffic cover art
Rather Outspoken cover art
The Terminal Spy cover art
Kill the Messenger cover art
The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama cover art
On the Road cover art
Dirty Rubles: An Introduction to Trump/Russia cover art
The Plot to Destroy Trump cover art
The Deep State Rides Again: How the Washington Establishment Continues to Try to Overturn the Will of the Voters cover art
Enemies of the People cover art
Hitler's American Friends cover art
All stars
Most relevant  
Well written with evidence to support the points made and good narration. I doubt I will ever read a newspaper again!

Sad but true.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
From hundreds of revelations of corruption and distortion in the British press that will make your eyes water and toes curl and scream in your head ‘how can this keep being allowed to happen?’ to the careful and thought out analysis of the processes that have lead us to ‘churnalism’ Davies gives a complete overview of news and media and it’s evolution in the early part of the 21st century.

Reading it now (2018) it’s warning have come painfully into realisation. Its concerns of the behind the scenes action of PR groups are now open facts that people expect and anticipate. The degrading of top news bulletin items to celebrity and tat seem tame compared to the industry of ‘fame’ that exists today and has become so much the norm in the west that it is no longer challenged as a distortion of the precedent of current events.

Crossley’s delivery is clear and concise. He affects just the right level of emotional investment into facts and information that make you want to spit in disgust, whilst he maintains a steady pace that acknowledges the weight of the words but never puts the character of the narrator over the voice of the author. You are never in doubt of the message of the book being skewered by the readers tone and are guided through what could an incredibly dense read by his air of professionalism and soft ‘received pronunciation’ that finds the natural highs and lows of the text. Would play well in any car, living room, pair of headphones, office, presentation or bedroom.

A fantastic piece for anyone who wants a full seven course meal of truth and journalism, where many modern books either stumble over too many facts and figures or while away pages on a contrived narrative, both usually in less that half the time of what ‘Flat Earth News’ invests, here there is the sublimest of journalistic balance. The Story and The Facts. Precisely what the author asks for.

Essential, Foreshadowing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
very in depth with information about how corrupt our mainstream media is, although I believe after years of research alot of this information is only half truths.

if you think news is real then please read this book very very insightful.

no news is good news so turn it off!

Misleading title was not what I expected

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Superbly narrated, this is a highly engaging, shocking and worrying expose of our modern media. Well researched and with broad reach Nick Davies leaves no stone unturned. I am very keen to read his other books - Hack Attack next!

Must read book!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The book provides an excellent breakdown of the current failings of the press in the Western world. There is no conspiracy, it's all about the pressure of money.

Essentiel reading

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The content itself is impressive, but the narrator sounds like Chris Morris in "On the Hour" which makes it hard to take the book seriously in places. Probably better to read the book.

I'm Chris Morris, and the earth is flat

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Easy to listen to and profoundly disturbing. I am so glad that I listened to this book although I now have to keep my mouth shut when my media educated friends quote from what they have heard and read through the 'normal channels'.

What we wish the Media really report

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
First half of the book is great, thou incredibly pessimistic look at the commercialised news machine. The first half is a great listen.
Later in the book the author goes through examples of cases in a tedious accuracy, which while interesting is at the same time incredibly boring to listen to.

Halfway to greatness

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Would you listen to Flat Earth News again? Why?

The book is a very good insight into the news-industry. Even though it also focuses on the specific cases, it very much remains within (and emphasizes) the structural constraints that journalists, other news-makers and media industries today operate in. Recommended.

As for the narrator, Steven Crossley, this was one of the best narrations I've heard, it fits very well with the book and also with who the author is (Nick Davies). I have problems with "robotic narrators", but this was fantastic!

Have you listened to any of Steven Crossley’s other performances? How does this one compare?

I haven't listened to others yet, but this one was superb!

Very good book, excellently narrated!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A wonderful book. Well read, a very sad story about the moden media and its contempt for the truth. That's why you should read it.

Should be read by everybody.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews