At 7pm Sky give us a news broadcast intended to link in with the news media, promoting their own website and referring to news in the blogosphere. It really is quite painful to watch; it is like your grandmother trying to be very trendy.
They are having a discussion between “bloggers” on the budget, the standad of which is childish at best. As usual, they have invited so-called bloggers to represent the parties – one Tory, one New Labour and one Lib Dem.
The problem is that minor party hacks don’t get any more interesting just because you call them “bloggers.” And it misses the entire point of he blogosphere. Political blogs are increasingly popular because they are not controlled by the political relationships and demands of media proprietors, or by control of other power structures. They offer unconstrained thought, information and debate, and one of the main constraints they escape is the cold dead hand of British party politics.
Sky’s gesture towards the blogosphere is undermined by complete lack of imagination.
“Sky’s gesture towards the blogosphere is undermined by complete lack of imagination.”
…and by the fact that they’re a bunch of c***s.
The Monkey see, Monkey do principle holding, the evident shift of the attention of the “main stream” media, as well as the political operatives to the internet, has been hastened by the mass pay off of various employees of various Media (even saint Michael of the lesser Grade), as these find their customer base shrinking, along with their income revenue, hence the bums’ rush to the internet.
Alas, the reason for the failure of the existing arrangements are not seen as the pitiful content laced with so much false, half true, and mendacious assertions put on offer, for the relevant customer base, but the “ignorance” of the punters, hence the same, old, same old, but on the internet, which costs even less than before!
Therefore, to find sky is behaving akin to the “hip” dad, uncle, or granny who is desperately trying to join the pack of the young roosters making a fool of themselves in the process of garnering the pack’s acceptance.
Let’s face it, the days of wholesale opinion forming factories are well and truly over, despite the wishes of those bent on conservation of yea olde constructs.
Finally, good riddance, and about time too, is the cry of every blogger; active, inactive, novice, or down right worn down.
“Political blogs are increasingly popular because they are not controlled by the political relationships and demands of media proprietors, or by control of other power structures.:”
Exactly!
The blogosphere is like the primordial-soup of evolution; it has no master or strategy.
Most of it will be pointless goo, but the freedom and diversity of its make up, the minimum set of rules, the dog eat dog anarchy of its blind prejudices, will ensure it evolves into many islands of perfection; the zoo of human thought, untrammelled, vicious, beautiful, and true.
Hmm, JimmyGiro, sounds more like:
“solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short…”
Except for the solitary part, that can be recast as ‘collective’ to suit the space of the internet. A grain of truth swirls around, but one read of a YouTube comment section is enough to confirm the demise of humankind! On the comments for police brutality at G20 were gems like – “I would’ve batoned that bitch in the face” etc etc. There’s a whole dumbed-down fascist armchair army out there to be controlled!
There is no way for TV to cover the internet effectively. Anything compelling they mentioned would just make the viewer think, surely, “Ah, I will have to check this on the internet” Does anybody else get this feeling? when watching TV, of having to jump up, run to the computer and check something. And this is the point, TV is revealed as incomplete. In fact, the expensive studios, the presenters plastered in make-up, the gravity of it all, it already looks hopelessly quaint, locked in the past.
There’s an awareness of this, of course, with the addition of laptops to the mise en scene over the last few years, but surrounding these hairsprayed autocued suits and dresses with the signs of the information age doesn’t do much for ratings.
TV and newspapers would be better to not invite its destroyer to participate openly, and to continue feasting, without credit, on the internet for material. That should keep them going a while.
And the deal done with Google (you can look it up), will destroy UK tv networks eventually, as the companies traded some shiny coins now against a future where Google has absorbed all of their ad revenues unto itself.
Jason, no need to add Dettol to the primordial-soup; the system is self sanitizing.
Consider how Wikipedia works; is it not the wisdom of anarchy?
It is our universal vanity that drives down the background noise of mediocrity and selects the winners; whereas it is economics and idealism that works towards mediocrity.
Negative criticism of the blogosphere has a funny unintended effect – you realise that all the same criticisms (lack of research, opinion presented as fact, important issues obscured by trivia, personalities superseding content) also apply to the MSM, only in spades.
Someone should explain to Sky that McLuhan was wrong – the medium is not the message. Well – not anymore.
Sky?
Just another pathetic arm of the bull$hit military-industrial-media-faux evangelism complex NeoCon style.
War criminals all.
As a lifelong politics addict, the internet has certainly transformed my understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes. Yes, I’ve spent hours reading ignorant bad-tempered bitching and paranoid twaddle, but it isn’t time wasted as it gives a “feel” of the public’s evolving mood. And the increasing number of indispensible blogs [yours is one, Craig] give me hope that the blogosphere can quite rapidly become an influential force – starting, maybe, with a national tactical voting campaign to make sure that this morally bankrupt and corrupt government gets a devastating come-uppance.
Bloggers are like those 18th-century pamphleteers – notably Junius – who were such a thorn in the flesh of George III’s Establishment who feared and hated them but could not suppress them. At all costs we must keep the net free and intensify the pressure.