Nick Davies’ “scathing account” of modern journalism has won the annual Bristol Festival of Ideas book prize.
The Guardian journalist’s Flat Earth News was picked from 120 entries to win the £10,000 prize.
Davies said he was inspired to write Flat Earth News when he realised that the weapons of mass destruction used to justify the Iraq war did not exist, and that most news organisations “failed to acknowledge their role in spreading the misinformation”.
Andrew Kelly, the chair of the judging panel, said the book was chosen because it presented new, important and challenging ideas.
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He said: “Flat Earth News makes you question the information that you get from the media. It is a challenge to complacency and a worthy winner of our first award.”
Flat Earth News’s expose “of falsehood, distortion and propaganda in the global media” caused a stir in the industry when it was published last year and is understood to have sold more than 20,000 copies in hardback.
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