BLOGthenticity

It isn’t everyday you find yourself touted as The Guardian poster boy for business blogging in the UK. It also might seem a bit odd for me to do a volte-face and give them a kick in the bread basket.

In essence, The Guardian is being slightly less than authentic in relation to its latest ‘exclusive’ involving the UK Government’s advice to go to war in Iraq.

I’m not here to talk about the details, but the devil in the details in relation to blogging.

Ros Taylor at the The Guardian is all in a tizzy that the big boys in the British blogosphere didn’t pick up the story and run with it like a gaggle of flouncing schoolgirls being chased by their lecherous headmaster.

In a post on the Guardian’s Election blog entitled ‘Hurry up Harry, and the rest of you’, they seem a touch bemused at the British blogosphere’s indifference to their ‘exclusive’:

We’re slow. Very slow. Let’s imagine that the US attorney general’s hitherto secret advice on the legality of the Iraq war had just been published. Kos, Talking Points Memo and Little Green Footballs and the rest would have been all over it like an ex-diabetic with a box of Krispy Kremes.

What happens in the British blogosphere? Well, the Honourable Fiend has just had his wisdom teeth out, so his less than illuminating gloss and furious conclusion (”Charge the lying fucker with fraud and send him to jail”) is perhaps understandable. The libertarian blog Samizdata, Stephen Pollard, Oliver Kamm and Harry’s Place have nothing to say yet.

All you have to do is read the end of the piece to realise that Ms. Taylor is really rather pissed:

Guys, if you’re going to take political blogging seriously - and fend off these kinds of criticisms - you need to sit down with Lord Goldsmith’s advice and give it a thorough going-over. Or the old-fashioned media will give up on you altogether.

The Guardian, if you really want to be taken seriously by the blogosphere you will soon learn that to impose yourself as some kind of crotchety blog pimp is not the way to go. British bloggers are not your blog bitches.

I’m personally rather surprised. I was under the impression that The Guardian ‘got it’. However, old media is as old media does, I suppose. They’re playing follow the leader, but nobody’s particularly interested. As a result they’re threatening to take their bat home.

The whole point of blogging is for people to set their own agendas and for others to follow suit as and when they choose. That’s why God invented trackbacks. That’s why we have comments boxes. And that’s why we have individual bloggers setting their own individual agendas talking about whatever they damn well please whenever they choose to.

The more I think about it, the more astonishing I find this.

Has the mask slipped? One of the key elements of the blogosphere is that it is an antidote to MSM dominance and agenda setting. I apologise for this over-simplification, but it seems as though Ros Taylor doesn’t understand this in the least.

I cannot think of a dumber way to lose any kind of credibility amongst bloggers than to start spouting that they will be given up on if they don’t take what they say seriously.

Get a grip. You aren’t the guardian of the blogosphere.

As we’re talking about ‘leaked exclusives’ and such, it’s quite interesting that Harry’s Place is currently running a story that was leaked to Harry via email about some pensioner who was allegedly beaten up by Respect canvassers when told he wouldn’t vote for their candidate George Galloway. [full details here]

There wasn’t a single paper touching this story until today. It’s a case of a blog being given the tale a full 24 hours before the MSM could get their head round it. The whole background to this contested seat is nastier than anything you’d wish to imagine - Jewish pensioners being attacked, libel cases between the two candidates and some real dirty guttersnipe politics.

However, it’s extremely interesting how this is playing out on Harry’s Place. There are claims and counter-claims and it’s all happening in real-time on a blog without any MSM influence to date.

It’s terribly high-risk. Should bloggers be feeding leaked information before the ‘rigourous checks and balances’ often ascribed to such things by big media? Could this whole thing blow up in the face of blogging seeming it hasn’t really fact-checked its own ass?

Most definitely.

However, due to the very nature of blogging with its open commenting and everybody fact checking on the fly, it shouldn’t be a problem. Harry could be wrong in terms of the factual basis of the email or he could be right. (Cue PiL)

Whatever happens isn’t of too much concern. If the story pans out then blogging wins, if it doesn’t he has to eat alot of humble pie whilst wiping more than a bit of egg off his face. Damn, he’s gonna be covered in more food than he’s had hot dinners. This is self-regulation in action at a very quick pace. The big boys have hardly touched it and the blogosphere has already blown it wide open whilst they fret and waste time seeking legal solace.

It might very well be a case of the bastions of old media threatening to give up on blogging if bloggers don’t dance to their tune. But, I’ll tell you what, blogging evolved because it’d stopped listening to the MSM’s tune a long time ago.

Maybe they’d like to dance with us instead?

[You’re also more than welcome to read a far more eloquent riposte: here”>Mainstream Media Go Apeshit - A Nation Yawns]

Filed under: BLOGthenticity, Paul