Email from Tom Naegels, Belgian journalist turned novelist and columnist:

Yesterday, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph published "astonishing revelations" in the case of the missing Madeleine McCann. Both newpapers reveal the existence of an e-mail, sent by the Metropolitan Police to counterparts in the Portugese and Leicester police. Based on information from an anonymous caller, it claims that "a child abduction ring based in Belgium placed an order for a young girl", three days before the child's disappearance. Most Belgian newspapers report today about their British collaegues' "revelations". All point out that 1.

I've just written a longish blog post about how Google AdSense is changing the way that language is used on the internet, and how this is feeding back into the online press, using Telegraph.co.uk as an example - which also namechecks Flat Earth News. I was writing a blog about this anyway, and happened to stumble across a piece in Private Eye which knitted two strands of thought together perfectly: How Google is changing language - and how the Telegraph lost its soul.

http://fanonite.org/2008/07/21/bad-days-for-newsrooms%e2%80%94and-democr...

 
Bad Days for Newsrooms—and Democracy

July 21, 2008

‘The decline of newspapers is not about the replacement of the antiquated technology of news print with the lightning speed of the Internet’, writes Chris Hedges.

IPI 2008: Glenny attacks BBC for placing foreign correspondents under pressure
June 17, 2008 11:15 AM

Former BBC correspondent Misha Glenny launched a forthright attack on the corporation today for the pressures it places on its reporters, and for hiring correspondents without the appropriate knowledge of the countries in which they operate.

ARGH!! OK, I read the book, I realise what is happening, but what can I do?

I think that this shows a good example of what has being going on. This mans name has been dragged through the mud and his life potentially ruined, and the papers responsible get away very lightly indeed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/15/law.pressandpublishi...

* Comment is free

"A small price for the press to pay for irresponsible behaviour

Eleven newspapers libelled Robert Murat. Unfortunately, it will take more than a £50,000 penalty to deter them in future
All comments (3)

* Roy Greenslade
*
o Roy Greenslade

I recently read this blog post (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/07/knives_guns_a...) on the BBC website about how the official statistics for knife attacks among teenagers in Britain do not live up to the headlines or panic. This seems similar to a lot of the examples discussed in the book. In particular, the rise in knife crime roughly matches a fall in gun crime, and mostly in big cities.

An Indian reader of Flat Earth News sent the following message, which is interesting partly because it traces the problems of unchecked churnalism to India but also because of what it suggests about the weaknesses behind the current naive enthusiasm for bloggers as a source of reliable information.

I'm a little surprised there's no reference in the book to the decline in standards of photography within the news media.
I started out in this profession back in the 1970's, with two basic manual SLR cameras, just four lenses and black and white film, yet I turned in the best quality pictures of my career during this period.
Now I am overladen with digital gear plus computers etc., costing 15 times as much as my old manual cameras, yet much of the time I'm commissioned to shoot garbage, by picture desks brought up on "celebrity culture".