I've been reading Flat Earth News by Nick Davies. He's a journalist in the U.K. who created quite a name for himself by criticizing journalist practices on Fleet Street - chief among them the routine recycling of unchecked second-hand material at some of the top media outlets in the U.K. I'm not that far into the book, but I thought I would share a couple of interesting excerpts (before I forget).

Davies commissioned researchers at Cardiff University to analyze news stories at four of the top daily newspapers (The Times, Guardian, Independent, Daily Telegraph). These researchers "chose two random weeks and analyzed every single domestic news story put out by these outlets, a total of 2,207 pieces."

Among the findings:

• "(T)hat the most respected media outlets in the country are routinely recycling unchecked second-hand material."

• "60% of these quality-print stories consisted wholly or mainly of wire copy and/or PR material, and a further 20% contained clear elements of wire copy and/or PR to which more or less other material had been added."

• "1% of wire stories which were carried by Fleet Street papers admitted the source. The denial of PR input is at least as thorough: PR professionals generally aim specifically to make their own role in a story invisible, and journalists are happy to go along with that."

• "The researchers went on to look at those stories which relied on a specific statement of fact and found that a staggering 70% of them, the claimed fact passed into print without any corroboration at all. Only 12% of these stories showed evidence that the central statement had been thoroughly checked."

The conclusion:

• "Taken together, these data portray a picture of journalism in which any meaningful independent journalistic activity by the press is the exception rather than the rule. We are not talking about investigative journalism here, but the everyday practices of news judgment, fact-checking, balance, crticising and interrogating sources, etc, that are, in theory central to routine, day-to-day journalism."

Could this be happening in the U.S? I'm not sure there has been a comparable study but according to a 2008 PRWeek/PRNewswire survey of 1,231 journalists, journalists acquire information from:

• company Web sites (89%), Google (73.8%), e-mailed press releases (72.7%), and conversation/personalized e-mail from a PR person (70.9%). Nearly half (49.5%) use newswires, while only 13.9% report that they use RSS feeds.

Note: Unfortunately, the book is not available yet available in the U.S. but you can order the book from Amazon U.K.