Friday, April 06, 2007

[fawkes on tv] grievous error hurt us all

Regarding the recent meeting of the MSM and the blogosphere on the MSM's home turf, Oliver Kamm said:

I know nothing of the pseudonymous Mr Fawkes, but I'm deeply sceptical of the value of political blogs and hostile to the whole medium of blogging. (I argued the point here and here.) Mr Fawkes's film is in my view ludicrous self-promotion, the vapidity of whose message is emphasised by the absurd affectation of its author's wishing to be anonymous and to be filmed only in darkness.

I've had a long association with Oliver now [in blogging terms] but I respectfully disagree that all bloggers can be tarred with the same brush. I don't consider this, nor this, to be unresearched and undefendable.

Nor do I think this, with this follower, ill researched nor the conclusions rashly drawn.

Devil's Kitchen commented on Guido's performance thusly:

Yes, Guido was hammered rather; however, I think that this is partially down to the medium. Writing allows a far longer reaction time and thus it can be easier to defend oneself. There's another aspect too; although Guido has his beliefs, his blog doesn't necessarily reflect them.

Look at it this way; I write very long posts, during the course of which I almost always reaffirm some aspect of my political ideas … Guido doesn't write in this way … it does mean that they are not so practised when faced with a spontaneous argument.

Trouble is, Guido had to be on a hiding to nothing to take on a rabid Michael White who was clearly out to show up the blogosphere. A scandal mongering blog is no match for researched 'assault' questions - the questioner is always going to have the advantage in this situation.

What I feel Guido has done, through both his ego and his ludicrous and long-ago-exploded anonymity on television, which it was wrong to do, is to allow the blogosphere to be tarred with the same brush, which sets us all back somewhat in the public estimation, including for the estimable Iain Dale.

To Guido's credit, he's been circumspect and has posted his take on the matter.

Further comment here and here.

GRIEVOUS ERROR OF MY OWN: Neojacobin was the one I should have attributed much of the data to and I even used some of his phraseology. Sorry, Courtney. don't know what happened.

1 comment:

  1. I don't know Guido but I certainly get the impression he wanted to take his step out into the wide world or real media and thought he could handle the situation. His ego demanded he take the step.

    His big mistake. Hopefully he learnt from it. His comments certainly point that way.

    I'm a reasonably quick thinker although that is not a good environment and so I like to think I know myself enough to never get in that situation. At the same time I don't have that big of an publicity ego either.

    I don't hink it has tarred all the bloggers. It will help those who have already decided but it must have caused some people to actually go out and look at what was said on the blog. It could open up a new set of readers even if they originally only came for a laugh.

    ReplyDelete

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