Flat Earth News summary

Imagine you’re a journalist who’s just stumbled upon a great story – but, after you’ve pitched it, your boss rejects it. What can you do? It might sound ridiculous, but a common practice these days is to hand it over to a wire agency, wait for them to run it and then get assigned the story.

This strategy has proved successful because media outlets place great confidence in the accuracy of wire agencies.

There’s no getting around it: most people love videos featuring cats or human-interest stories. This fact hasn’t escaped the attention of traditional media, and even the most respectable newspaper websites are now filled with cutesy and clickable stories.

There’s a simple reason for this: When media outlets decide what stories to cover, the predominant goal is to attract as many readers as possible. Therefore, the goal to inform the public about crucial issues takes a back seat.

Western journalists aren’t at risk of being imprisoned for speaking their minds, but they aren’t as free to express their opinions as you might think. After all, most of them depend on media corporations for their salary, and these corporations aren’t going to pay them to write things that might harm profits.

That’s why news outlets go out of their way to pick stories that have no risk of producing a negative reaction, whether it be a lawsuit or an angry protest, either of which could be harmful.

Have you ever read an interview about a new movie where the “reporter” asks inane questions, like “Could you please tell me again, why is your movie so amazing?” If that sounds familiar, then chances are you’ve read a fake interview.

Such interviews are actually staged by companies that handle press releases in order to influence the media. These interviews are conducted by PR advisers, not reporters trying to get to the bottom of things.

You may have had one or two conspiracy theorists try to convince you that intelligence agencies are controlling the worldwide media. The scary thing is, that’s not far from the truth.

This kind of government propaganda peaked during World War II and the Cold War that followed.