A blog doth not a journalist make

IT'S WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY, although you'd be forgiven for not knowing it as the world's press doesn't seem interested in enough in the subject to tell you about it.

Even the Manchester Grauniad, the hacks' rag of choice, fails to run a news story on the event and merely features a desultory blog on the subject which has, at the time of writing, elicited a meagre two replies.

While there are serious problems involved, including the safety of journalists reporting from dangerous areas such as the BBC's Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, who disappeared 52 days ago, it is this reporter's belief that there's too much damned freedom about these days. Any nutcase can set up a blog and speak their brains to a global audience. This isn't journalism, it isn't freedom of speech, it's a pain in the backside.

Proper journalism has to involve more than one person. There's the editor who sets the news agenda and the publication's general stance on various topics; the news editor, whose job is to shout at the journalists; and the hacks themselves, who generally have to do as they're told. With a blog, all the editorial controls, the objective reasoning and, above all criticism that goes to make a national newspaper readable, goes out of the window leaving just a stream of drivel. It's vanity publishing at its worst.

In the old days, retired colonels from Bognor Regis had to resort to writing letters to the Daily Mail complaining about illegal immigrants stealing our jobs and neighbours failing to trim their leylandii hedges. Today, they can set up a blog, giving them a platform to express their often odious views. Worse still, the more gullible members of society believe everything they read, giving every blogger more credibility than they deserve.

And even worse than that, lazy hacks on proper publications are increasingly using blogs as a source of news and comment. They wouldn't invite a crazy shouting on a street corner into the studio to comment on current affairs, but if you've got a blog, they'll send a limo round and you're on Newsnight before you can say 'Jeremy Paxman'.

One of the keynote speakers at today's World Press Freedom debate in London is described as a 'political blogger'. What right does someone who can't even get a job on a local newspaper have to pontificate about international journalism?

Of course, there are other aspects to press freedom. In the US, for example, IT trade reporters are free to cut and paste as many press releases as they wish in order to put a story together, while in Europe, computer hacks take it to mean the freedom to blag as much free hardware and software as possible and to be flown first class to exotic destinations for press announcements.

The growth of one man and a dog hardware sites combines the worst aspects of what passes for 'journalism' today. They are usually partisan in the extreme, have no effective editorial controls, blag as much free kit as possible and they can't write. You can tell the worst ones - a review of a video card is split over at least half a dozen pages, each contributing to the site's page view count. These sites are little more than blogs and should be spurned.

Press freedom is a laudable aim - let's try to make sure it includes the freedom to be spared the spittle-flecked rantings of a million blogs. µ

L'INQ
World Press Freedom Day