Opposition response to the state of the blogosphere address

Like Paul Evans of Hot, Ginger and Dynamite, I hail from Somerset but live in London. Paul has given a ‘State of the Blogosphere’ address in advance of President George W Bush’s final State of the Union address. In anticipation of the final opposition response to a State of the Union address by Bush, this is my opposition response to the State of the Blogosphere address.

Mr Speaker,
Mr Vice President,

Mr Evans began his State of the Blogosphere address by saying that

“Today, we are regularly advised that the blogs are the new fifth estate of British politics.”

The term ‘fourth estate’ was coined by Burke, according to Thomas Carlyle. Prior to the rise of the newspaper, people relied on the priest and the pulpit for news. The power of the fourth estate came from being able to report, independently and verifiably, the news of the day, principally from the galleries above the Houses of Lords and Commons. Here was something genuinely powerful; no longer could time, distance and obscurity protect the powerful in Westminster and Whitehall.

Or so we thought.

Power is not confined to a few acres along the banks of the Thames. It lies also in company boardrooms, and sure enough we see companies – into which I include charities – not only influencing politicians directly but also subverting the press, sometimes with the collusion of members of the press, to promote their agenda, be it sales, policies or influence. Equally, power is not confined to a few acres along the banks of the Thames. It lies also in town halls, devolved assemblies, political parties and any pub or front room where one person sits down to convince someone of something.

News reporting, though, is difficult. You have to check facts, interview, probe and search but most of all, in today’s competitive world, you have to cover an awful lot of ground. While blogs may well be able to highlight what’s going on at the council, they’re not going to be able to say what’s going on in a municipality on the other side of the world; they won’t know if something important is happening. What they can do, though, is act as a filter. I could read, in the New York Times, for instance, about what’s going on in New York city and highlight it for my readers. That is only a worthwhile effort, though, if I say why it’s important or, more generally, why I’m interested in it and why they, the readers, should be as well. Immediately, it is commentary and is filtering (despite the protestations of some about getting rid of the filters) and is biased. None of these things are bad, but they do mean that we should and, I think, do take them with a pinch of salt.

If it is commentary that it is valuable – if it is argument that can change the world – and not reporting the reported, there seems to be little point in half the UK blogosphere linking to a BBC News article on Peter Hain’s resignation. Tell me what you think, tell me why it matters but don’t be surprised if I don’t bother reading your blog if you just tell me that it happened. It would be even better if people wrote intelligently.

‘Intelligence’ comes from the Latin intellego, meaning ‘I understand’. If someone understands the situation, they would, I hope, do more than simply say ‘I like’ or ‘I dislike’. Swearblogs are one of the worst for this; while an acid tongue can help get a point across, many would do well to realise that vitriol is not invective and impudence is not satire.

I therefore question the assertion by Mr Evans about the state of the ‘left’ part of the blogosphere. The Euston Manifesto is changing thinking, for one thing, and I would venture that, as a general rule, more thinking by bloggers, at the moment, goes on towards the Labour end of the spectrum. This is not to say that all is well, or that all is bad on the right; that would clearly be false.

The great poverty of the Conservative-leaning blogosphere is that it did start first, and so it had a few stars at the beginning. Quite why people try to emulate Paul Staines in ‘breaking’ ‘stories’ is beyond me, as he, it seems, blogs more-or-less full time, which most people can’t do, and the stories he breaks are often inconsequential or plain wrong. There wasn’t a second email system and whether Brown picks his nose or not is of supreme indifference. Unfortunately, people seem to be taking the commenting habits of those early blogs as well. What good are fifty posts congratulating an author on a post? If it is a new, struggling blog then, yes, by all means congratulate, but don’t just say ‘good’ or ‘bad’; don’t resort to shorthands like ‘NuLab’ or ‘GuF’. If that’s all you have to say all the time, develop your ideas or get one page on a free host and shut up.

We have here two views of blogging. The one says that politics is best measured by noise; the other says that politics is complex and not measured by a single metric. Mr Evans concludes by saying that “The litmus test of the political blogosphere will be its capacity to sway opinion in the country at large”. On that basis, it will fail. There are too many blogs; they must be aggregated. If it is done by the media, Mr Evans’ thesis falls. If it is done by large blogs, they act in the same way as the media, and Mr Evans’ thesis falls.

Litmus is a crude indicator. Universal Indicator differentiates more finely than lichen extract, and allows us to judge the effects of the political blogosphere not just by its capacity to sway opinion but to improve opinion, to foster debate and hopefully – and this is a lot harder than throwing mud – increase, if not turnout at polls, engagement in civic society. That is something worth blogging for.

And may Tim Berners-Lee bless the netizens.

xD.

PS – The text of Carlyle I mention above, the Hero as Man of Letters, can be found here. Much of Carlyle’s work can be found here on Project Gutenberg.