Accuracy is not valued particularly not when it would point to the story being too insubstantial to justify column inches and especially sexed-up column inches.

I have no idea what the solution to Nick Davies’ churnalism is. However, my major concern is the influence that newspapers have in disseminating shoddy research and making it more plausible that nonsense/error/commercial interests will influence public policy or health spending.

“Obviously, we at HolfordWatch would agree but there seems to be an extraordinary lack of due diligence by general media, trade magazine editors, universities and people who should know far better.”
As far as I can gather, the mainstream media seems to actively discourage reporters from checking such trivial things as, say, factual claims – or the backgrounds of those making them. Fact-checking would require news outlets to employ sufficient journalists, costing them money that could otherwise be counted as profit. There’s a piece here about fact-checking (Discover), that has a comment (second one down) referring to the focus on profits, lack of time and expertise, and the reliance on PR and Wire Services as factors in the mainstream media’s failure to fact-check. [Another thing I spotted was that the author of the piece writes that: "One of the things I like most about blogging is the after-the-fact fact-checking that comes from commenters who catch mistakes"; which is something that I would echo.]

2nd page
start of 3rd full paragraph states:

“Of course,it’s not quite as simple as that”

there. Patricks first honest sentence in a long time.