Those awful bloggers

Defensive, toi?

The End of Fortress Journalism

Mr. Horrocks is not one of my favourite senior media paragons.

And having watched awhile, I had eventually to leap in to what is a naked, doomed yet worrying attempt by some to set 'professional' journalism apart, and above, from other forms:

The problem is most people seem to be under the mistaken understanding that the likes of Twitter and blogs are actually news. They're not - they're nothing more than commentary. Each posting is simply one person's view of an event or issue... Unless the rules are changed to level the playing field the choice of news media will be a publicly funded broadcaster (the BBC) or inane one-eyed tweeters.

I have to say that I have used tweets that link to very valuable objective information. And I have, on more than one occasion, felt that news, even from the BBC, has been a combination of narrative-enhancing and/or interpretation of events that hardly makes it a balancing choice to the outlaw blogging Wild West that some are trying to claim.

I find my only hope is to try and gain exposure to a fair spread of 'fact' and 'opinion' - from individuals to uniquely-funded corporations - in coming to something approaching what is as opposed to what many would like to persuade me it should be to satisfy their often elitist, exclusive (and excluding) agendas and/or world views.

Addendum:

An 'interesting' view on how you take on board news and views vs. how you broadcast it without troublesome contrary opinion:

The Blog Is Dead.....oh no it isn't, oh yes it is...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/07/the-blog-is-deadoh-no-it-isnt.shtml

Our own Nick Robinson has recently confessed that he's stopped reading the comments on his blog

As the politicians some 'reporters' so like to wallow with, if you only set to transmit and never on receive, you might get unpleasant surprises if those you think are meekly absorbing your missives actually react to just being talked at as opposed to being engaged with.

We seem to be at an odd stage where those who used to dominate the news agenda are not liking the erosion of their (often less than objective, or benign) influence, and are trying to get back to the 'good old ways'.

Good luck with that.