The question ‘Blogging: What is it good for’ has reared up again. prompted by this post over at the Sharpener, by Third Avenue, which has drawn very interesting, different and in many was equally valid responses by Jamie K at Blood & Treasure and Martin Stabe.
Two main questions seem to emerge from this mini debate - does [readership] size matter and should bloggers, especially political bloggers, aspire to some sort of noble purpose or are we just engaged in a hyper-extended pub conversation - in which case whose round is it?
I’ll take the question of size first - no I don’t believe it does matter in the UK. Guido makes a good point in responding to Third Avenue by noting that you can have some small impact if your blog makes the mainstream media’s ‘watch list’, although I’d go a little further and argue that there’s a core of maybe 100-150 UK blogs where a mention and a link may get you noticed by MSM. It helps not only to have good material but to be thought a good judge of material, Tim Worstall’s weekly Brit Blog round-up being a case in point.
Guido’s right to point, in addition, to the importance of the ’signal to noise’ ratio in blogging. In this I think the smaller British blog scene does rather well by comparison to our US cousins. Navigating the uncharted waters of the US blog scene requires that you sift a lot more gravel to turn up the nuggets of gold; Britain now has an establish core of very good blogs; Chicken Yoghurt, Stmubling and Mumbling, Bloggerheads, Europhobia, Slugger O’Toole and many others, which provide an entry point from whose blog rolls you’ll rarely get a bum steer.
I think comparisons with the US are best avoided. Bloggers operate in the UK in very different legal and cultural conditions to the US, conditions which give the British scene a character all of its own - we may still be able to learn a few things from our counterparts over the big pond but otherwise we need to value the culture we have and not spend our time casting envious glances at our one-time colonial cousins. In particular, the British scene has a highly individualistic and libertarian streak to it, one all sides of the political divide, which resists comparison with the more partisan scene in the US. The core elements of British blogging rarely manage to stick with ‘my country, right or wrong’ except in extremis; let alone ‘my political party, right or wrong’ - open scepticism is much more the order of day as befits a nations whose greatest philosopher was, arguably, David Hume.
I like both Jamie’s take on blogging:
“So if we’re talking about the purpose of blogging, I’d propose the following. It demonstrates that writing can be a viable mass leisure time activity. Yes, kids. Writing is fun. Why don’t you do it too? This, in itself, is a public good irrespective of blogging’s relationship to the professional media.”
And the suggestions highlighted by Martin - the court of appeal for news judgement and the transformation of news media from a lecture to a seminar - yet neither truly takes us much close to the holy grail of political blogging, a state in which bloggers begin to assert some small degree of political influence. This has, I think, much to do with the overall nature of politics in UK over the last 25 years, where six of the last seven governments have been elected with majorities of a size where even parliament struggles to assert much in the way of influence over the Executive, let alone us humble online correspondents.
That may change to some small extent if the next general election results in a government with only a small working majority, say 20-30, or even a hung parliament. If and when politicians, once again, have to start working to put their policies over on the basis of genuine reasoned argument rather than being able to rely on the ability of party whips to keep the recalcitrant on message all the time, then the indepdence of thought and rational scepticism of the British blog scene may well come into its own as a counterpoint to the current incestuous relationship between parliament and press.
Still this leaves us without a clear sense of purpose - of what, in its political context, blogging might actually be for and what it might, in the right circumstances achieve.
I think the key to finding such a purpose lies in looking critically at the relationship between politics and politicians and mainstream media, at the nexus point where to the meet. Identify the flaws and fault-lines in that relationship and we have a potential agenda and ethos which might just live up to our aspirations of noble purpose.
Fortunately, this is piece of work already done for us by, of all people, the late Robin Cook. Read his diary of his last two years on the front bench as Leader of the House - published as ‘The Point of Departure’ and comes, fairly early on, to a quite pointed and incisive commentary, over three or four pages, of the nature of the relationship between politics and press; one which neither stints in apportioning blame to either side for the denuded nature of modern political reporting and yet which offers tantalising hints of a new agenda to which bloggers may be well suited.
Cook is merciless in his assessment of the politician/press relationship, noting that:
“Between us we have created a style of poltical discourse which is aggressive and overpersonalised and which has become a barrier between us and our joint public”.
Politicians, he charges ‘are in danger of seriously boring our voters’ through the incessant repetition of vapid sound bites and single-line messages, adding that:
“It is a depressing feature of single-line politics that the hardest hitting message is more likely to be negative about the threat of your opponent than about the promise of your own policies”.
His second major criticism of politicians is their lack of originality, the obsession in all parties with staying on message and endless repeating the officially sanctioned and approved party line.
It’s a assessment I doubt any of us could fault - anyone with a genuine interest in politics, a passion for it even, can not have failed to have found themselves almost screaming in frustration at the TV set while watching Question Time as some faceless government drone endlessly repeats the same answer over and over again, regardless of the question they’ve been asked.
Who amongst us does not breath a sigh of relief on reading the TV listing to find that Tony Benn, Clare Short or Boris Johnson will be making an appearance on the show that week or settle into gloom and despondency on finding that the panel is comprised exclusively of members who are known for their rigid adherence to the party line. Cook is clear in ascribing this to very nature of the British people, a society he describes as ‘defiantly individualist’ and one which ‘respects honesty, self-expression and originality’.
Would any of us disagree with his assessment? I certainly wouldn’t.
Cook is equally scathing in his criticism of the press. If politicians are obsessed with staying on message it because, as he puts it, ‘they are dealing which is no longer capable of handling an original idea but knows how to report a personality conflict’.
In this he has a point. A healthy democratic society should value differences of opinion, reward originality and foster debate, instead the press treat such things as signs of ‘damaging’ divisions and splits; and both main parties have learned all too well in the last 25 years that the consequence of a divided party is electoral defeat.
Cooks points also to the press’s single minded pursuit of negative stories - bad news makes for better headlines. As evidence he provides a quite astonishing statistic; in 1974 the ratio of negative to positive media stories was around 3:1, today it averages 18:1. When one thinks back to 1974; to the three-day week, oil crisis, power cuts, Vietnam, etc. the press had far more cause for negative reporting, having far more negative thing to report on. Cook’s point is well made when he says:
“The danger is that if we constantly present the political process as resulting in unremiting failure we will stifle any faith that democracy can produce solutions”
Cook offers two further telling criticisms of the press.
The first is their remorseless demand for novelty, for always requiring a new story, a new initiative - is it any surprise we get government by press release in such a culture. Cook pointedly illustrates his view by noting a briefing he gave in 2001, before that year’s general election, to the political editor of a major [and unnamed] broadsheet who, on being told that the big objectives for the next term would be full employment and fewer children living in poverty, asked ‘What’s new about this?”.
Serious politics does not throw up new trinkets for the media to play with every day - real systemic change takes time and serious policies which deliver real benefits may do so only quietly and over a long period time. The public may not even notice a government’s best work and greatest successes as such things are rarely the stuff of good headlines.
Cook’s third point is one well illustrated by this week’s reporting of disagreements on how far to extend the government’s proposed ban on smoking in public places - itself and illustration of his first point about how what could and should be thought a healthy occurance in a vibrant democracy is sold as a ’split’ - the media’s obsession with personalities over policies. Looking at the reports of this issue one cannot help but notice that the policy issue at the heart of this story; a ban on smoking in pulbic places; was entirely incidental to the ‘real issue’ as the press saw it, that of which members of the cabinet lined up on each side of the debate. The fact that John Reid disagreed with Patricia Hewitt was seen by the press as more important that the question of what it was they were disagreeing about.
It is, therefore, any wonder that on so many issues; drugs, prostitution, immigration, etc. it is nigh on impossible to have a reasoned and adult debate; one led by consideration of policy options and the evidence for and against differing approaches to the issue rather than the screaming headlines and knee-jerk whining of the Mail, Express and Sun.
Cook’s incisive assessment of the nature and pitfalls of the prevailing relationship between politicians and the press offers not only insight but clear indications of a role that political bloggers could play and one which would fit with aspirations of having a more noble sense of purpose for our activities.
That’s not to suggest flaws in either Jamie’s or Martin’s arguments. One cannot disagree with Jamie’s argument that we should do it [blogging] just for the enjoyment of sitting down and writing; and both ideas highlighted by Martin would clearly fit into an approach to political blogging which sought to address Robin Cook’s arguments.
Putting it all together brings me to two main conclusions.
First, there are things that, over above the simple enjoyment of writing, we can legitimately aspired to as political bloggers.
It’s doubtful at this stage that we can exert any direct influence over the political and democratic process in the UK. Dreams of changing the world through blogging are rather premature, although things may change in future should we enter a period where governments are much less secure in their parliamentary majorities and more inclined, therefore, to consider alternate viewpoints and make compromises which reflect a broader range of opinions that at present. Nevertheless bloggers can, taking on board Robin Cook’s critique, exert an influence over the direction and tone of political discourse in the UK and offer a counterpoint to the existing politician/press relationship.
Over time it may be possible to build relationships with the political elite in which original thinking on their part is rewarded rather than attacked for being off-message; where it comes to be understood that the UK blog scene offers an arena where serious politics can be debated in a mature, rational and adult manner.
Equally it seems possible to build relationships with the press which are predicated on the idea of turning lectures into seminars. While the MSM are certainly not going to walk away from their existing role in framing the debate that doesn’t preclude them from recognising that its on the UK’s political blogs that the debate is actually taking place. Quality is factor in this relationship on both sides of the equation; the press, as Guido observes, will only follow and relate to blogs which offer content of a quality which will interest and stimulate their readership. By the same token bloggers will only relate positively to those sections of the press whose sytle and tone reflect their own aspirations to be taken [semi-] seriously - few currently bloggers would, I think, happily include references to being ‘recommended’ by the Sun or the Daily Star on their blogs.
True, that puts this relationship firmly at the quality end of the newspaper market but then that is as it should be if we are to address Robin Cook’s critique of the existing nexus between politicians and the press; if getting serious political debate on the agenda is difficult in dealing with the Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent, what possible hope is there of achieving the same with the Mail, Express and Sun? Why should we even bother with the down-market tabloids whose staple diet is the very sensationalism we’re wanting to avoid. There is, I think, no snobbery in pitching our wares to the top end of the market given the nature of what passes for news reporting at the bottom end.
For the time being, at least, framing the debate does mean developing relationships with the mainstream press; the very least we should be seeking is the kind of recognition which gets us ‘mentioned in dispatches’ or, better still, that sees journalists directing readers to the UK blog scene to add depth to their reporting and highlight aternative viewpoints on a particular story. Over time this relationship may then evolve into something more of a two-way street in which stories which start on the blog scene migrate their way to the mainstream just as, current, stories broken by the press spawn debate and discussion on our side of this relationship.
My second conclusion follows neatly on from my first and is based on my experience of blogging since beginning to write in earnest earlier this year; and that is that some of what I’ve identified as possibilities above are already beginning to happen.
The press has started to dip its toe into the waters of the UK Blog scene, albeit tentatively and with some degree of ambivalence - and all, with one notable exception, any reliance of US style blogswarms to make the media sit up and take notice. This has not been without its problems; one or two journalists haven’t quite got their head round the idea that copyright works out here on the Internet pretty much the same as it does everywhere else, but on at least three separate issues; electoral reform, ID cards and the public response to terrorist attacks on London, its been bloggers and online campaign groups which have propelled the debate and pushed the overall agenda forward. If bloggers have been good at nothing else in this last year then its been in ignoring the government’s attempts to close down debate on certain issues and keep the political discourse going; and this is something the MSM has started to recognise, albeit sometimes grudgingly.
Although I doubt we’ll ever reach the point where political blogging becomes so influential that is begins to shape the media’s agenda or, more ambitious still, government policy, I can conceive of a situation arinsing in future where, under a government less secure in its majority and less wedded to managerialism and, therefore, more sceptical of the pronouncements of policy wonks and civil service advisors, that bloggers may come to represent alternative strands of thinking that govenrment’s may come to regard as too useful to disregard - particularly if we can take Robin Cook’s commentary to heart.
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