Yeah, Right…

I see via Timmy and DK that Michael Bywater is commenting in the Independent about blogging and the folk who do it.

That guy. The one opposite you on the train, hunched over his iPhone, stabbing away at the virtual keyboard and making ssllp-spittle noises. He’s probably at it. That other guy, the one in Starbucks with the black Moleskine, the MacBook Pro, skinny latte, Oliver Peoples spectacles and intermittent finger-to-chin pauses for “thought”: he’s at it. Cube Girl over there is at it, and the Mumsnet brigade are at it, both on and off Mumsnet.

They’re all at it. Self-proclaimed masters of the shadowy international scandium oligopoly (a.k.a. Tim Worstall) are doing it economically. The bloke from The Devil’s Kitchen is doing it by saying “fuck” a lot, and who can blame him?

The general gist, though is that we aren’t in the same league as professional journalists. We aren’t. We tend to be a little more careful with our facts and if we get it wrong, will openly correct our copy. We engage with readers and, generally, exercise  higher standard of ethical behaviour.

When it comes down to it, the professional journalist is only a fag paper away from the politician when it comes to disinformation, failure to check facts, misleading statistics, propaganda and downright lies – so, yes, I am not in the same league at all and would need to scrub myself down with sulphuric acid and a steel loofah if I ever became contaminated by one.

For every one that I may think is mad as a bucket of frogs, there’ll be one that you think should be dunked in cold water and locked away for good. And the great thing about the bloggers is that they have no agenda apart from self-interest. No proprietors to second-guess, no corporate political position to uphold, no readers to pander to and, on the whole, no advertisers to placate and no particular urge to make a profit. They are writing as the gentlemen of the 17th century wrote: to argue, and to be heard by those they want to hear them. Four centuries on, the amateur rhetoricians are back. But this time their platform isn’t St Paul’s Churchyard but the internet; their medium, not the pamphlet (or the privately-copied manuscript) but html.

This, of course, is correct. What he doesn’t mention is that we modern pamphleteers are ordinary people; members of the electorate, so a voice is a good thing, not a bad one. Politicians are supposed to serve, not dominate and it is the blogger, not the journalist who repeatedly challenges their witterings. Journalists have been just a little too cosy with these venomous mountebanks.

The bloggers will have a fine old time.

We will.

And I can guarantee I’ll cover them fairly.

Yeah, right…

Prejudiced? Yes, but equally prejudiced against the whole damn pack of them.

You are a journalist. Prejudice is precisely what I would expect. As for the open contempt for the electorate, yup, I expect that, too.

By the way, does anyone actually read the Indy?