Tricks Journalists Play

Dennis Barker

Tricks Journalists Play:
How the Truth is Massaged, Distorted,
Glamorized and Glossed Over
(ISBN 9781900357272
eISBN 9781900357432)
was published in May 2007
208 pages 216 x 138mm
£14.99

Sarah Birke in New Statesman: 'Journalists are seen as a cynical bunch -- not just by politicians, but by the general public as well. Noble ideas of honesty, accuracy and a bit of hard graft seem to have been abandoned in favour of networking and re-spun press releases...[Barker] does well to call for more investigative journalism and a public campaign to rethink within the profession.'

Tom Easton in Lobster, no.55, summer 2008: Apropos of Flat Earth News, he writes: 'Other reporters, including, for example, a Guardian writer of a slightly earlier vintage than [Nick] Davies, Dennis Barker, have given insider insight on what goes on. Barker's low-key [book] deserves a wide audience for its breadth and witty clarity.'

Roger Silver on Amazon.co.uk, August 2008 (four-star): '..One way of being forearmed would be to read this book and learn from the insights it provides into much journalistic behaviour. Writing as an insider, [he] gives examples of the tricks and sleights of hand used by journalists in a host of different situations...His book is a valuable navigational aid for anyone thrust, willingly or unwillingly, into the potentially treacherous waters of media relations. It is also a disturbing commentary on declining journalistic values which Dennis Barker so demonstrably deplores.'

Read the first chapter

Dennis Barker has written a hard-hitting exposé of the erosion of standards and values in the media world of newspapers, TV and radio over the past twenty years. In particular those of integrity, independence of thought and accuracy.

<> He was prompted to start work on his book by the low standing of journalists – at the bottom near estate-agents and politicians – in recent opinion polls on the esteem in which the public holds people in different professions. He takes the reader through a whole gamut of journalistic ‘tricks’ that pinpoint the failings of the media, in over fifty short chapters, including ‘the death of the reporter’, ‘prejudicial words’, ‘shovel it all in’, ‘the sub’s role’, ‘my beautiful career’, ‘same old celebrities’, ‘money worship’ and ‘headlines and fib-lines’. In ‘snubbing’, we see how a colourfully dramatic conflict or a cauldron of ill-will can be created where none may exist at all.

<> The general public is becoming increasingly aware of the unsatisfactory state of affairs in media journalism, which is highlighted by the periodic distortions caused by the political ambitions of chief executives, tycoons and media power brokers, misleading headlines, and its extraordinary obsession with celebrity culture. Such aberrations could, the author argues, lead journalism towards the dangers of greater statutory control.

<> Tricks Journalists Play is essential reading for the majority of us who care about the pernicious effects of spin, misrepresentation and deception, and social and international prejudice, the purveying of half-truths in relation to crucial issues that affect our future, and the failure to report fully and accurately on matters that have a bearing on freedom and democracy in this country and the world at large.

Author

Dennis Barker is an experienced journalist who has worked for The Guardian in many different roles, from reporter, feature writer and media correspondent to columnist, since the 1960s, and at the moment is a contributor of obituaries, mainly in the media and entertainment spheres. He is the author of many books, including The Craft of the Media Interview, How to Deal with the Media: a Practical Guide, the People of the Forces trilogy: Soldiering On, Ruling the Waves and Guarding the Skies, One Man’s Estate and three novels. He also broadcast regularly with the BBC in the 1970s.

Contents

Introduction

1. A Revealing Battle

2. The Price of Progress?

3. The Death of the Reporter

4. Upper and Lower Case

5. Prejudicial Words

6. Puns

7. Concealing the Questions

8. Puffery

9. Firsts

10. He Told Me

11. ‘Friends’

12. Shovel It All In

13. Let Me Through, I’m a Cliché

14. Wilful Ignorance

15. The Feeling In the Office...

16. Absentee Commentators

17. Apologize!

18. Heroes and Villains

19. Rudeness

20. To Be Fare...

21. The Sub’s Role