There I was tucking into my shrimp salad and listening to one of my heroes, a living icon of broadcast journalism in Britain, dismissing my blog as “egotistical nonsense.” She didn’t actually mention my blog, of course, but that is how it felt. Emboldened perhaps by the Chardonnay, I pointed out that although my audience can be measured in the dozens, there is interest nonetheless in what I have to say. I know I have an audience because they post comments on my blog and send me e-mails... By the time our pudding arrived, Kate had admitted that what she really objected to was not so much weblogs, as the idea that journalists should spend their "precious time" writing about how they obtained their stories: “You are blogging to a peer group - that's all right - I can understand there is a demand for that. But journalists shouldn't have any time to blog - there are too many stories waiting to be told!” The other thing that Kate objects to is BBC managers who blog during working hours. Their weblogs, she maintains, are proof they have nothing better to do. I am not mentioning any names.
What utter blinkered claptrap. Nick Robinson's blog has become an integral part of what he does. He has perhaps two minutes on screen to report on what's going on, but by using his blog he can explain the background to his reports and let the viewer in on how he got a story. The same with people like Kevin Marsh and Richard Sambrook. The BBC Editors's Blog (one year old this week) has become hugely popular as it makes them more accountable. Jon Snow said on THIS WEEK last night that for the first time journalists like him are being critiqued, and they don't like it. Witness the reaction to some recent stories about journalistic endeavours on this blog... Snow, to his credit, thinks this is a good thing, even if it makes him feel uncomfortable from time to time. There's going to be a lot more of it as people become less willing to accept what they read in newspapers or hear on the television as fact. The success of blogs is at least in part attributable to the failure of the mainstream media to account for themselves in a way their readers and viewers can accept. We have come along way since Barry Took presented POINTS OF VIEW.
30 comments:
I think you are being very unfair to Kate Adie. She is a journalist and presents 'From Our Own Correspondent' and hence what she produces is very much higher up the 'quality' food chain than the vast majority of blogs.
Your blog is interesting and erudite, but it is very much the exception which proves the rule.
I am reporting what she said and critiquing it. What on earth is wrong with that?! I agree with you, her programme is excellent, but that has nothing to do with what she has said here.
Kate Adie is no doubt a brave woman, but she's not as bright as I once assumed she was if she cannot see the benefits blogs have brought the public. And also if she cannot see that failings of the MSM are the prime reason behind the popularity of particularly political blogs.
Zorro
There is nothing wrong with most blogs as a bit of idle entertainment - What I think Ms Adie is rightly saying is that many people seem to confuse 'opinionated arrogance', as Dizzy would put it, for real news.
As for 'From Our Own Correspondent' this is closer to the 'blog' form of opinion-led reporting - but I think her point is that this has to be red circled from accurate, impartial news journalism where the reporter's own views should not be reflected in a biased and partial report.
And Iain I am sorry, but your false dichotomy of 'You other understand blogging or you don't' reminds me of the bollox from George Bush that 'You are either with us or with the terrorists'. Simplistic tosh like that might be fine for people who can't understand sophisticated arguments [like Nadine Dorries] but the rest of us are a bit smarter.
She will really hate me. Kate Adie regimental mascot of the 7th Armoured in Gulf 1.
I liked Barry Took.
I'm not quite in agreement with jon Snow.
Journalists have always been critiqued, but now those critiques have a national and sometimes international voice.
By their howls it would seem that journalists cosy little world is slowly becoming open to scrutiny.
And they don't like it.
Only four posts in to a thread on blogging and a British broadcast personality and already an Anonymous has managed to drag George Bush in.
People in the 'new' media spend an awful lot of time trying to get onto the 'old' media.
Adie has a point. Although people like Nick Robinson have integrated bloging into what they do I'd say the majority of the Beebs blogs I've browsed are pretty pointless.
I'm saying nothing, especially about liberty.
I'm so bored with these media types. They think only they and their 'stories' have any right to be heard.
Whose that other old bag that keeps going on about blogs?
Listen ladies - the people have a god given right to speak and speak they will.
Now that we have the medium to do so its time they were relegated to the past - where they belong.
Are you sure you're really a Tory Iain?! I'd've thought any red-bloodied member of your party would have leapt to agree with an "insider" who alleged that BBC (official hate object No 1) managers (official hate object No 2) "have nothing better to do" than blog...
On BBC Editors blogs, I could not agree less; they are used for self-justification and obfuscation. I recall recently when a BBC News 24 extract which the BBC lied had been 'lost' of World Trade Centre 7 being reported to have collapsed while it stood in the background of the shot, twenty three minutes before it was actually demolished by explosives (or 'fires' as claimed later). The BBC's explanations were wholely inadequate in their claim to have 'lost' the film or in their 'premature' announcement of the building's demise, despite repeated requests for proper information.
The full story is on YouTube of course outside the editorial control of the self-appointed media being the location of the real blogosphere, like Iain. The rest is just simply the self-appointed media using a different mechanisation and publication cycle, but still under editorial control and therfore unrealiable.
Are you sure Kate didn't say," I don't like blokes "?
Conventional journalists with and without blogs will doubtless feel threatened by the rise of the blog. All such vested interests tend to view upstarts with both disdain and mistrust since the authors may not have been through the gruelling business of reporting on Dog Shows for the Newtown Bugle.
There is also a visceral dislike amongst journos of the rise of an articulate right wing alternative to the solid diet of left-liberal reporting in which the BBC and its satraps specialize. They hate the idea that new technology might, in the absence of a Murdoch or the like to start up a right wing competitor to the BBC, finally allow the emergence of a real competitor to their perceived monopoly.
These are early days as yet and the medium is still in nappies, if one may be forgiven the comparison! But think where it was but two years ago and where it might be in two years time. And why do conventional news outlets such as the Daily Telegraph have their journos blogging?
In time it is possible to foresee this medium supplying people with the news and comment that suits their taste and political orientation.
It is called "the free market" by the way.
PS My fondest memory of Kate Adie is of a report she did from Gulf I after what had obviously been a very good night in The Regimental Mess. Doesn't make her a bad girl by any means!
"Kate objects to ... BBC managers who blog ". SHe wouldn't dare,surely! I take pride in the fact when she recently had a significant birthday I was the only BBC manager she invited...!
Yer, but...
These are two entirely different approaches. Blogs are intrinsically a dialogue (except for the likes of A Campbell who would rather not enter into any discussion which he did not completely control).
All the other, mainstream, media are essentially one way communication. And I think that's the flaw in the 'rationale' for the move to 'control' blogs. What the Government wishes to do is to intervene in what amounts to a (relatively) private exchange of views. Recent legal assaults on blogs have been on the basis of 'publishing', and I think that should be challenged.
When/if the lovely Adie actively participates in these forums maybe her views will bear more weight.
Now HRH has admitted to having an email address (the DT is torn between "oneself@palace.gov.uk" and "lizzy_2@hotmail.com") can it be long before she'll have a blog? Will Mr Dale be offered the ceremonial post of Feral Blogger in Waiting to the Royal Household? What will the Queen's first post be? "One has noticed with some surprise that the Scottish person Mr Brown, tho' crude and uncouth, has a certain manly rectitude about him. Discuss".
Polly Toynbee doesn't like blogs either. She writes about them in the Guardian today: "Strident, mostly male rightwing cynics, ... deter more reasonable participants."
So there it is chaps. With apologies to Neil Kinnock:
"Under a Toynbee government, I warn you not to be strident. I warn you not to be male. I warn you not to be right wing. I warn you not to be cynical."
Anon
How dare you slate Nadine you left wing surrender monkey. At least she's an MP. Last time I checked, you weren't.
I have heard several rumblings from New Labour about controlling blogs . I wouldn`t be at all suprised if they don`t try it somehow .
The right to share views in a group forum is always going to be on the list of would be totalitarian states.
Huntsman, you don't have a very big brain at all, do you? If you did, you would realise that she, like all the other appeasers in the MSM, would like nothing more than an unholy alliance of feminazis and jihadis to rule with a politically correct iron glove.
Everyone knows that the 'journos' steal from the blogs anyway! Lazy gits that they are! LoL
I saw Kate at exceptionally close quarters during the Kosovo expedition. I was her Army Liaison Officer and was with her where-ever she went.
What we forget is that she trail-blazed for women in the media. She fought for everything she achieved against considerable odds. That she seeks to protect it is understandable. It is in her blood.
I didn't agree with everything I saw her do, but I learnt a lot from her and couldn't fail to respect her.
What Kate misses, is that if she might just try joining this brave new world with the same vigour that she stormed the news media of the 70's and 80's, she might discover that there is a very exciting world in which she might discover a new generation who would be very interested in what she had to say.
Go on, Kate, give it a go!
I find it hard to reconcile the busy life of a journalist with someone who has time to blog. I see the benefits of both but see Kate Adie's point.
I do feel that the future of the blog might see itself as more entwined with old school journalism but also feel it has some way to go before it reaches the level of mass media and for now remain the preserve of the nerdy few (myself included) although I am an infrequent visitor to these shawls.
I do agree that the benefits of blogging could catabult Kate into a new arena of pioneering but with the traditional news media still dominating this remains a niche market...
Adie is not alone.
Robert Fisk "I despise the internet" (21/07/07) Independent http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2788619.ece
I know this is an old post, but I just have to comment - no, I really do!
Watching Nick Robinson during one election night, he was sitting at the round table with the other pundits and guests, blogging away when he was not required to talk.
I and about another 3 or 4 people were commenting on his blog as fast as he could type up new posts. What fun we were all having!
Two things became abundantly clear:
Firstly he was blogging to one very small and select audience.
Secondly, he was not fully concentrating on what was happening round the table - more than once he was caught on the hop having not heard fully what the previous person had said.
Kate has a point - blogging can become addictive, and for the serious reporter may well get in the way of their proper job.
Talking of blogging, I am moving mine - oh, the pain of it all! Still, the new set up should allow me a little more fun.
Nobody
Interview with Mark Field,Westminster MP
We asked him if he was aware of the EU’s plan, instigated by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to force through a sixth and final EU treaty adopting the EU Constitution, by May 2009. Mr Field agreed that if this happened, British
MP3’s would be out of a job. That didn’t worry him personally, he would just return to industry, but he was concerned for the loss of democracy for his constituents.
He’s fully aware that the sixth EU treaty means the end of the Conservative party, both because Westminster then becomes powerless and obsolete, and because the EU states in clause I-46-4 that national parties like the Conservatives will be discouraged, and only EU wide parties like the EPP and PES will be permitted in the EU parliament, which he realises is powerless. But again he knows that as a Conservative, he will be forced to obey the party whip. So will Mark
Field be another Conservative turkey voting for Christmas in the EU?
We found Mark to be well informed, on top of the issues, and anything but complacent.
http://thewestminsternews.co.uk/twn3all.pdf
It’s on page 7 of the paper
http://eutruth.org.uk/
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