Nick Davies controversial author of Flat Earth News, pictured speaking at 'The Media Accused', 16 April 2008, LEWIS Media Centre, London.
OK, so the above pic isn't really Nick Davies' assessment of how much hard news makes it into the media, but it could be.
One of the key themes to emerge from the 'Media Accused' event held in the LEWIS Media Centre this week was that increasing amounts of our media are being filled by PR professionals – from the obvious press release pick-up to the influence of "pseudo events" as Nick calls them (more on which later).
So most of us pretty much knew that already, right? But it's still an issue which gets people heated and it sparked fascinating debate for the audience on the evening.
Getting stuck in to the debate, Danny Rogers, editor of PR Week, pointed to a particular irony, following Nick's assault on falling standards of the media and the role of PR.
"I think it's ironic that Nick Davies is a brilliant PR man," said Rogers. "His book was released on a Sunday for a Monday, he's on the Today Programme, he does a series of events, he's an excellent speaker and he comes up with terms like 'churnalism' and 'Flat Earth News'. And then there's the classic technique, the study, from Cardiff University, to back up his claims."
Jon Bernstein, multimedia editor of Channel 4 News, questioned a number of Nick's claims. "I think it is exaggerated and I don't think it's as important as Nick makes out," said Jon of the "chaos" Nick predicts as the inevitable outcome of the media's inexorable decline.
While addressing failings on both sides of the fence, PR Week's Rogers added: "It makes for a much healthier media if journalists are professional and PR guys are professional. I think most PR people don't lie, most of the time. I think they'd be stupid to do so because they'd get found out and once they've been found out their credibility will be zero."
Lis Lewis-Jones echoed the point, adding PR professionals must maintain their credibility or risk putting themselves out of business. And surely for all the optimism in that statement there must be some truth there. If the value of the media is forever undermined by the current generation of PR professionals then what's left (assuming, as perhaps we shouldn't, that readers would be further turned off if the newspapers were riddled even more than now with PR stories)?
The PR industry would have over-fished our oceans. Or to further the eco-allegory, it's almost a case of the PR industry needing to guard against long-term 'climate change'.
I personally feel any suggestion the PR industry is to blame for falling media standards is laughable. But if the media cannot be trusted to self-regulate what it lets onto its pages and programmes (feel free to discuss) then perhaps the PR industry needs to start monitoring its 'dishonesty footprint' for its own sake.
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