Last night, the BBC flagship news analysis programme,
Newsnight, had a feature on blogs and their impact on the mainstream media.
Their pre-billing of the item began with a highly encouraging comment on last week's brilliant work by the internet on the use of white phosphorous. Slightly more depressingly, though, it indicated that the discussion might end with the old canard about the lack of professional standards of blogs and their excessive influence.
It didn't turn out that way.
This is what they said the item would cover:
Talk to any news editor and they will tell you the influence bloggers are beginning to have on the news agenda.
The latest story to hit the airwaves - the US use of white phosphorus in Fallujah against Iraqi militants - was given impetus on the internet.
The so-called Blogosphere had been chewing over the allegations and found the evidence that ultimately forced the Pentagon to reverse its denial.
The bloggers will tell you they now perform an essential role in uncovering truths the mainstream media either overlook, or look away from.
Others warn that bloggers are not bound by the standards the rest of the press must meet, and are beginning to wield too much influence.
Tonight our resident blogger, Paul Mason, will lift the lid off the world of the blog. We'll also debate both sides of the issue.
My low expectation of the outcome of the discussion was for two reasons. Jeremy Paxman, the anchorman of the programme, is a brilliant but acerbic mediator of such discussions. (He once famously asked in a live interview the soon-to-step-down leader of the Conservative Party, when he was Home Secretary, the same question seventeen times because each time he got the same evasive non answer.) Paxman has little time for what he might perceive as a fashion or a passing trend, which is how I feared he might see a discussion about blogs.
My second reason for believing that the discussion would be bland and unhelpful is because of the type of response that I have had from various BBC newsroom executives when I have discussed their treatment of news compared to its treatment on the internet.
This is part of a typical response:
On the subject of internet news sites, as I'm sure you are aware they operate under very different rules from those which govern the BBC. Whilst many sites are free to broadcast and publish whatever they chose, whether or not they have checked the veracity of a story, the BBC adheres to a very strict set of guidelines. This requires, amongst other things, that we engage in very vigorous checking of information before we broadcast it and that can mean that we report stories less quickly than internet sites and indeed sometimes decide not to broadcast stories which we cannot stand up. As broadcasters we have limited air time so an important part of our task is to prioritise stories and inevitably some don't make the air. Once we have selected which stories are to be aired we have to accept that some people will feel that we've made the wrong choice. That said we are very happy receive comments from viewers such as yourself and they often form the basis of editorial discussions about whether the right decisions are being made.
The cabinet documents regarding the decision to go to war on, leaked during the recent election campaign, were given extensive coverage on BBC News programmes. The leaks were made during an election and were therefore reported in the context of that ongoing story. The documents were much discussed `on air' for several weeks and are now firmly a matter public record. The issue of the Iraq war and the decision to go to war were probably the most dominant issues of the election campaign and that was reflected on BBC News programmes throughout the campaign. The row in the United States about these leaked documents has been reported and I'm sure will be again.
Thank you for your thoughts on the future of the Media. Journalists across the BBC do use the internet as a source of information and stories, albeit bearing in mind the issues and limitations detailed above. As you know the BBC has a significant online presence with one of the most popular online news services in the World. It is often the case that BBC News online publishes stories before terrestrial BBC News bulletins are able to broadcast them. There is certainly much more detail and background available on BBC News Online on many stories. This is true even though BBC online employs the same rigorous standards of journalism which apply across the rest of the BBC. Considerable investment has been made in this service and will continue to be made by the BBC.
There is a rather defensive, self-satisfied tone to this type of response. I thought that tonight, there might be more of the same. Yet, I must admit I was startled by that opening sentence of their pre-billing notice that I quoted above: "Talk to any news editor and they will tell you the influence bloggers are beginning to have on the news agenda.". Maybe, things were changing.
Well, thanks to a friend telephoning at the wrong time, I missed the first part. Worse, the normal ability to review, and direct you to, the programme through its repeat ( normally available online for twenty-four hours) has been absent for the last two days because of some unusual "copyright reasons".
Even so I caught the conversation after the introductory piece. It involved a professor from Stirling University and a New York Observer journalist on line from the States. All three (including Paxman!) were positive about the influence of blogs and how they were doing a job that the mainstream media was failing to do.
Paxman made the point that key news stories, like the use of phosphorous, were picked up by the mainstream media briefly but dropped as they moved on to the next story. It was often only the internet blogs that actually got to the real significnce of an item and kept it visible and in the forefront.
This is a tremendous advance in the UK. Their conclusion that there was a role for both is the first time that I have heard blogs being seen by journalists as a true partner in the role of the media and that both have an equally important part to play in our democracies.
This acceptance of the role of blogs means that the BBC and the British media recognise that they have a parallel oversight of world events. Tony Blair may force the resignation of the BBC Director-General and a senior reporter for the mild pursuit of questioning whether or not we were misled into invading Iraq but he cannot do the same to the internet news sources. Nor can the BBC afford to bow to political pressure or hide behind a need for "journalistic professional standards" when their presentation of the news is tested every day by what the blogs are saying.
So why is this an open letter to Markos? Well it is letter to him and to you - all of you who contribute to Daily Kos.
You see, we have no equivalent in the UK to Daily Kos. Nor are we likely to in the short-term. There are a number of reasons for this and they will remain for some time. When Jerome and I discussed setting up European Tribune, we had high hopes of it fulfilling this role. The numbers on there are slowly growing and I would urge all Europeans to contribute to it. I can certainly think of no one better than Jerome to take it forward. Yet, I feel, it is only the support of you Americans on there that give it a critical mass at the moment. Part of the problem is that Europe still does not see itself as a single entity and national perspectives still dominate - frequently Eurotrib has to defend itself, unnecessarily at times, against criticisms of being anti-British.
My own view is that, whilst there are a large number of well supported US blogs, it is Daily Kos that gives them all a real strength. Daily Kos, through its sheer size, is a powerful amplifier of the totality of the liberal democratic voice on the internet.
It is also serves this role for European liberal bloggers. When I write to the BBC and talk to our Members of Parliament in the UK, I do so using Daily Kos as my reference. When Jerome magnificently walked into that Wolfovich press conference in Paris the other day, he asked his questions in the name of Daily Kos.
A few months ago I had an email exchange with Markos about creating a European Kos. Rightly, he explained that the focus of Daily Kos was United States politics and. with 2006/08 coming up, it is important not to lose that focus.
I could not disagree with the sense of this approach. From this discussion, however, the idea of European Tribune was born and, with a rather different format and much more limited ambitions, New International Times.
Yet I am certain that it is to Daily Kos that BBC journalists turn and which acts as a key reference point for the UK media generally. I am equally certain that the change in attitude that I saw today on the Newsnight programme is in part a function of Daily Kos and the role it is playing on the internet.
In the UK, it is no different for us than it is for you. It is enshrined in your Constitution. A healthy press is essential for the proper functioning of our societies. DKos is one of the checks to the news media, given its present structure, that keeps it anywhere near its essential role in helping to maintain our freedoms. I believe that, given the amount of Trans-Atlantic exchange of information that is now occurring, Daily Kos is providing these checks and balances to the UK media as much as it is doing this in the States.
This is an awesome achievement by Markos and by all you who contribute on here. Hence my thanks. The sea change in how journalists on the BBC see blogs that I heard last night is part of your success.
I hope that you will bear with us on here a bit longer whilst we get our own act in order - even if Welshman gets it wrong sometimes! We need you and this remarkable resource that you have all created.