Somewhere around the archives there is a discussion about...umm... let's call it "plogging" - the political blogs - in which I insisted that it is screamingly obvious that poltical bloggers are within the line of the parties. In Canada, at least, the conservatives apparently have admitted it:
In his book, there were tidbits for junkies – he admits the Conservative party feeds friendly online bloggers stories "that were not quite ready for the mainstream media."This is hardly disgusting or a reason to jump up and down about hypocracy given the line that is fed about MSM bias. It's just that it would be nice if people admit it when they are going on about the citizen journalism claptrap.
Comments
Ben (The Tiger) - October 28, 2007 10:22 pm
Funny -- capcha: "Funding important".
Anyway. Re the Flanagan revelations -- we knew this. Come on, every time Taylor or Janke would say that he got information from "reliable sources", you knew darned well it was someone in the party feeding him info.
During the May 2005 go-around, I started receiving e-mails from anonymous accounts with weird names, with bits of political tips -- I imagine this was an early part of the strategy.
I generally ignored them, as they were not really all that newsworthy or looked like mindless bits of spin -- though I did see them cropping up in others' blogs.
As for the whole "citizen journalism" thing, I always was a little skeptical. The internet is just another medium for the same old stuff. If you take it too seriously, then you end up being Garth Turner. And who wants that -- a nation of 30 million Garths?
The main thing that blogs do in terms of politics is to remind one to be skeptical about the framing and the motives of people in the mainstream media. It's a healthy element of a free press, but that's all it is -- one more element.
Hans - October 29, 2007 9:08 am
"plogging" -- perfect.
Thomas - November 6, 2007 7:03 pm
I think there is another use for it, bloggers are more likely to do real digging on an issue where very often journalists want to be spoonfeed a story...