Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The Lesson of Dan Hannan's Speech
Dan Hannan's demolition of Gordon Brown speech is the single most watched video on YouTube today. And all without a single mention of it in the mainstream media. Think about that. And when someone tells you that the internet has little influence on politics, cite it as an example.
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48 comments:
I think the lesson of today is that we totally underestimated exactly how much control the government has over the MSM.
Why has it not got in the MSM, that is the question?
LA dreads the answer.
LA
I can not see any reference to this on either the official Tory web site or the official site for Tory MEPs. Are they ashamed of it?
It is clear that the Government pretty well controls the mainstream media. I wonder how soon they will make a move on the internet. I meet more and more people who look to the internet for news as the BBC etc are so discredited.
Some of the bloggers are moving their hosting offshore which might help a bit. Iain, do you have any plans for if they try to silence you? There was something the other day in the terrorist bill about blocking access to sites that promote violence, given Labour's revord that could easily be widened to anyone who dissents. Are you prepared?
I saw this on Jack Maturin's Anglo Austria blog. Its a superb, very effective demolition of Brown. Its a shame the Tory front bench don't come across as effectively as this.
What a cosy little cartel we have going between Westminster and the MSM. North Korea could learn a thing or two from this lot.
Given its popularity will not cause so much as a ripple at Westminster or in the polls, I would cite it as an example in FAVOUR of the argument that the internet (and by inference, the electorate) has little influence on politics.
It gets worse
Tory Bear has the new Pioneers over the US of A
http://www.torybear.com/2009/03/tomorrow-belongs-to-them.html
It's on Sky News, in the Blogs section.
Why doesn't everyone here contact the MSM, and mention this story?
If enough of us do it ... surely it will gain an airing?
It should be on the front pages. After all the gilts auction today failed to raise the planned £1.75 billion. As Hanan said, Brown has run out of our money.
I don't think the government does 'control' the MSM. At least, not in a Blofeldian way.
No-one's issuing instructions, or even letting it be known that some things would be frowned upon, know what I mean, nudge nudge, wink wink.
It simply suits them, the MSM, not to rock the boat. And so, they don't...
The Telegraph now has this on their site as I posted here earlier this afternoon.
Still very tardy though and makes me wonder why such a shit hot story is being handled at the end of a barge-pole??
PS Complained the the Beeb about 100% absence of coverage - you can too here
It also took ages unless I'm going blind for ConsHome to post about this too.
It's now clocking 80k views and over 120 blog posts :)
But does preaching to the converted do any good?
Euro MEPs might have a little snigger after having to put up with Brown lecturing them. But Hannan will be fobbed off as a wingnut.
The novelty is someone saying what we have all been saying to his face.
He is insulated in parliament - and in any case the wider electorate want a bit more than mudslinging.
Iain,
Try to put it into your Sky review this evening.
The Drudge effect is really kicking in now. The subscribers to Dan's YouTube channel is increasing exponentially. Currently 390
Sorry, 391, somebody subscribed while I was writing.
1,300 ratings (5 stars). Text comments 1,361
The fact that it is not on MSM is fast becoming a story in itself.
It gas c.79,000 hits. Certainly something, but no game changer either.
Did the Queen just take over and us plebs just missed it?
(Charley wandering with T'ster)
Give it time Paul. It's only coming up to 3PM Eastern.
Dick the Prick, if Merv did launch a coup d'etat the MSM wouldn't run the story anyway.
not suprised the Tories arnt making something of it, Daniel would go down a storm with the public and make Cameron look not just a little bit on the light side not to mention being a threat.
Thats why I fear he is destined to stay in Europe
JuliaM, the government absolutely does control the MSM:
1. The government's PR budget alone is £1 billion. (That's about the same as some people think will be raised by the new 45% tax rate.)
2. Far more valuable than advertising revenue to individual journalists is information. Without toeing the party line, hacks find themselves without anything to fill their papers with. Proprietors would have to go back to employing real investigative journalists with budgets etc. It's corrupt; it's against the Prevention of Corruption Acts but who decides who is prosecuted... oh the govt.
Coup d'etat without the coup!
There's more from Dan here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=283UiAMk_As
Any mileage in ambition being a project? Gosh, there are loads of boring stuff to do - let's keep it boring: it ain't a raffle.
Are we buying Burmese lads?
It might be the fact that I refer to it on my blog haha!
Well done Dan I say!
It is having an effect
Embattled Brown puts big-spending Budget on hold
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23666761-details/Embattled+Brown+puts+big-spending+Budget+on+hold/article.do
The views are now at c.167,000
About 89,000 people have watched it in the last hour. Hopefully some Continental (European Continent) Blogs are picking it up. Oh dear Gordy..
This morning I saw the Guido story about it, so I checked the video out again to see how many views it had - 25,000, with a couple of hundred comments.
Now, merely 9 hours later, it has almost 170,000 views, and over 1,500 comments.
Amazing, but I bet the MSM won't touch it...
what it brought home to me is how *silly* the atmosphere at Westminster is. Hannan simply could not have made that speech here. He would have been jeered and shouted out, he would have had points of order, he would have had imbecilic tories behind him waving order papers and so on.
There's no mechanism in the house of commons for making a simply direct point in 3 uninterrupted minutes like he was able to.
There is a lesson here about how parliament could be more relevant.
Does Fox News count as MSM? Dan Hannan is currently doing an interview with them following an airing of this clip. Sky 509 if anyone wants to see!
You can get some idea of the BBC's European news priorities by reading yesterday's entries on Mark Mardell's blog:
"...The European Parliament awaits Gordon Brown's speech on the world economic crisis, but other important work goes on.
"People may be tightening their belts - but everybody loves ice cream," says Italian MEP Iles Braghetto, speaking to a packed news conference about the European Day of home-made ice cream...."
also (sorry if I prick a bubble) but he's not entirel unknown to the MSM - his blog is hosted by the daily telegraph.
No normal people have ever heard of this guy before. Thats probably the reason MSM is not picking up on it - yet. His posting on Yo-Tube only get 3000 views at best.
I blame all those lefty newspaper proprietors.
It is pretty clear that Mark Mardell gave up being a serious journalist years ago. Why put his BBC salary at risk by attempting to be a good reporter? If he was any good he would have never have been given the job.
Actually, the most-viewed video on YouTube today is entitled "Affirmation Girl: Fantasy Pool Date". Strangely, it seems to have about three times as many viewers as the Hannan film.
Which just goes to show - porn vs politics is an easy competition.
167,779 views in 24 hours last time I looked, for a political speech at the European Parliament in a half empty chamber.
260,000 views so far. The biggest eye-opener for me is the lack of coverage that the speech got in the mainstream media. I hadn't realised that politics was so stitched up.
The American commentors have pointed out that the Views count for the video on YouTube has mysteriously stopped at 260,143
Something fishy seems to be going on. Or did our Dan crash YouTube?
Yes, someone else has commented on the fact that views stopped at 260,143 (and still have at 22:49 GMT) and his previous comment was deleted mentioning this.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence...
UTube views now at 316,779
DannyHanny has gone mainstream in the US on the Fox Network and on Rush's radio show- which has a huge following.
Who controls the media now? :)
And that's just from the preening Hannan hitting "play again"! If there were a Tory govt doing well with this crisis or having avoided it as one might expect from this drama then he'd have more of a point. But there is not. Bush's USA and Tory Iceland are the markers you have for how well the laissez faire conservatives have done with these unprecedented global problems.
On the question of why this, or indeed Farage's effort, haven't made the MSM one should perhaps consider the "who he?" question, rapidly followed by the "so what?".
"suckcp" in word ver? That can't be right.
On the You Tube counter ... it updates every hour or so, not instantaneously.
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