Bad News

by Mark Pack

Bad News is a popular guide that helps you make sense of the news wherever it appears – print, broadcast or online. Peppered with examples from around the world, the book turns a serious subject into an enjoyable read. You will learn as you are entertained.

Readers will discover all the tricks and techniques required to work out whether to trust a story based on an anonymous source, when big numbers are really small and when small numbers are really big, why you should ignore what appears behind someone on the TV and much more. You’ll even learn why you should always read stories in the Daily Mail backwards and when correlation is causation.

But readers will also learn how ill-suited the news is to understanding and interpreting the modern world, even when it comes from honest journalists working for reputable outlets. The news has a role, but readers will learn how to ensure they don’t confuse that with understanding the world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Journalism, Politics

320 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2020

About the author

Author Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, Bad News: what the headlines don't tell us and 101 Ways To Win An Election. Liberal Democrats Life Peer. Party President 2020-25. Edit Liberal Democrat Newswire. Host Never Mind The Bar Charts podcast.

Reviews

[Christopher Day · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does what it says on the tin and does it pretty well. Would have liked to know more about how he thinks journalists should avoid the problems he describes, though that obviously isn't the point of the book. Thorough footnotes were very helpful. Main issue with the book is that it reads like a collection of blog posts and individual chapters, rather than a coherent whole.

[Tim Caswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

As elegant as News from Nowhere and as significant as Politics and the English Language. If the media are a large part of the current malaise this is a large part of the antidote. Freakanomics for the mass media.

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading for every person on this planet.

[Jayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly useful book - thank you.

[David White · Rating 4 out of 5]

As was pointed out a few years ago, in England and Wales deaths by bee sting equal the number of deaths by terrorism. Yet you do not, either here or in the many other countries where similar figures apply, see rushed emergency anti-bee legislation.

Bad News articulates many things that you may have suspected about the news but never quite managed to put into words.

The news has a valuable role to play in our societies. We need the media to keep politicians accountable and the wider public informed about what's going on in the world. We can't just dismiss the media as "biased" if it doesn't mesh with our partisan views. Sometimes, this is little more than tin foil hat nonsense. Other times, it has an element of truth but is exaggerated.

But the news is indeed biased, only that, as Mark Pack is right to argue, partisan bias is often only a small part of it. Yes, a bias towards negativity is another. But moreover, it tends to be biased towards sensationalism, eschewing information for a good story. When you think about it, the news often really isn't that representative about what's going on in the world. An example is how so there are so many stories that stoke fear of crime, even though crime rates have fallen across the Western world since the mid-1990s. This leads to a telling quote from a Daily Telegraph journalist:

[The official crime figures] do not reflect what our readers see on the streets every day. You can try and cut it any way you want. We try and get a picture which reflects what our readers are seeing every day ... some of us would say, our readers see this lawless Britain in some part of their life, they do not want to be told by the government that violent crime is falling.

Using examples from the UK and US, Pack explains the tricks that have been used to create "clickbait" long before it was possible to click, whether it's burying the truth behind an overblown headline in the final paragraph or treating an election campaign like a close-run horse race. One of the takeaways is that it helps to consume more news that looks at long-term developments. In the end though, the most important takeaway is that if we want the media to do better, we need to be more savvy consumers. Many of the problems discussed in the book exist because they're what gets them those views or clicks.

If I'm being picky, I'd have preferred longer sub-sections to improve the flow of the chapters and, since this is not an academic text, less footnotes. There were several times when there were footnotes on three pages in a row, or in one case five in a row. That said, Pack is an engaging writer, sometimes witty and good at explaining things in plain language.

[Graham Lippiatt]

OMG! President Trump is right! All the news is fake news. News stories are selected, distorted, manipulated and sensationalised at best. You can now add to “lies, damned lies and statistics” anything you read in the press. As Mark Pack makes wonderfully clear, if you want to know what is going on in the world, pretty much the last place you should look to find out is a news outlet. But if you want to know how to navigate through the tangled jungle of misunderstood polls, self-serving puff pieces, recycled churnalsim and well, just downright BS, Bad News: What the Headlines Don’t Tell Us is a witty and informed guide to everything that is wrong, and a few things that are actually all right, with current news reportage. Do read this clever and insightful book.

I should add that I do know the author through the Lib Dems, so I suppose that means I am a bit biased but, honestly, this really is essential reading for anyone who consumes the news in any format. As Mark points out, you should always read through to the end.

[Tony Fitzpatrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably quite a good book to read at the moment. Mark Pack is a Liberal Democrat Lord and self confessed news junkie and stats lover (especially of election related data). He however confesses to now never reading newspapers and focuses instead on more considered and long form journalism, including podcasts. This book takes apart many of the newspaper "tricks of the trade" in presenting stories, with many sections on the ways in which they can mislead. A little overlong, and maybe a bit repetitive, it was however refreshing and I found it a useful counter to the wall to wall instant comment coverage of the Covid pandemic we are experiencing at the moment. The best bit of me was the realization that election campaigns barely (if ever) make any difference to the result of a General Election - history says check the polls a few months ahead, put your feet up and turn off the TV. The result will be in line with that initial assessment - true for all but two of the elections since the war. Given the anxiety levels that I tend to feel in an election that is good advice!

[MichaelK · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Bad News' by Mark Pack is a guide to spotting distortion and falsehood when you're reading the news. It is quite handy having all this advice in one book, but the chapters are each broken down into smaller sub-chapters which each feel like the length of a blog post. Pack makes reference to his blog multiple times, and this book unfortunately feels like a series of blog posts but together. Each topic is covered briefly, and there is very little sense of a narrative building throughout the book. The short sub-chapters meant the flow of reading was often interrupted. I found it enjoyable to dip into, but not so enjoyable to read for a prolonged period. The footnotes were also annoying, adding further interruption to the flow (in many cases the information in the footnotes could easily have been omitted, or incorporated into the text proper). I'm glad I read it, but I don't feel like thrusting it into people's hands.

[Olly Colluphid · Rating 5 out of 5]

An examination of journalism. Entertaining and optimistic.

Very good suggestions that should be widely shared. Three key ones the news is too soon to judge what is actually happening, the headline is not the story and don't react emotionally until you've checked the details elsewhere!