Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me!

Blair knew he was going to get an earful from the commentariat when he gave his speech on the modern British media today.

"I've made this speech after much hesitation. I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters," he told the crowd.

And so it has been. Quite why Blair chose to target the Indy, why he singled out the lobby press and why he lambasted an "impact agenda" is beyond me. Firstly, there are surely more deserving targets. He gives merely a nod to his own administration's impact on political reporting. The courting of the Murdoch press recieves no attention, nor his fawning over the tabloids in the early years of power. The handling of the David Kelly affair and the shameful bullying of the BBC is likewise, a galling elision.

Secondly, has not is always been so? "News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light" is no more true of the media in Blair's Britain than it has been of Fleet street for the past century. And this year alone what of the light shed by the Sunday Times and cash for honours? Or the Guardian and BAE bribary? Light and heat go hand in hard, Mr. Blair, and you should certainly be feeling hot under the collar.

"Right sermon, wrong preacher," editorialized the Guardian. They're right. A lot of what Blair said bares careful scrutiny.

"A problem is 'a crisis'. A setback is a policy 'in tatters'. A criticism, 'a savage attack'," said Blair. Today, read about the UN's damning verdict, or bonds soaring and plunging or MP's scorching private equiteers.

Sometimes the words are proportionate, other times not. Political journalism suffers for its art in this respect. It's tricky to convey the impact of what's being said, off the record, on the QT and very hush-hush when you've got a ten minute slot to fill. Nick Robinson's news on the BBC is ten minutes of his well-informed opinion; not ten minutes of hard news. Of course, Nick Robinson often hits the mark, but Blair does nonetheless have a point in identifying a shift in political coverage. What Nick Robinsons says is the news. The medium has become the message.

It's a shame that the media's reaction to Blair's comments hasnt been as carefully couched as his speech was.

"This speech is not a complaint. It is an argument," said Blair.

Simon Kellner hasnt been so prudent. Instead, he has used the front page of the Independent to respond to Blair's remarks. Kellner seems completely oblivious to the fact that his actions are the clearest valedation yet that the Independent is "avowedly a viewspaper." His broadside is territorial, narrow and hot-blooded. "we feel our readers today want more: a diverse range of commentary, colourful debate, provocative front pages and, yes, the views behind the news." Well quelle horreur, Mr. Kellner, that's exactly what Mr. Blair said.

This blog is, of course, just as guilty of being a part of the creeping commentariat. But it is worrying that a national newspaper should feel that it knows what opinion's it's readers "want to hear" - even more so for the eponymous Independent.

Blair, for all his mendacity, got one thing right. "The way that people get their news may be changing; but the thirst for the news being real news is not."

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Conservapedia

Conservapedia grabbed my attention after it was given some coverage online in GuardianUnlimited.

In general, it’s a pretty muddle-headed idea.

‘Conservapedia’ scores a pretty spectacular own goal in the justification for its existence, namely that Wikipedia is run by a censorious cabal of loony liberalistas and thus a new direction is needed… enter Conservapedia. Unfortunately, by wielding a pretty hefty black marker themselves, actively proclaiming a political bias in their very name and arguing, among other things, that dinosaurs are only 6,000 years old they make whatever good points they had pretty redundant.

Wikipedia is a great resource. Its whole premise is openness and democratic editing. If some disgruntled neocons were angry about wiki’s coverage then they should have edited it online – or tried to.

I’m willing to accept that wikipedia may have a built in ‘liberal bias’ – I do so because…

1. The idea of a democratically edited encyclopedia, open to interpretation by all is a pretty ‘liberal’ approach to information by definition.

2. Most of the wiki editors are clued up amateurs who spend a lot of time online – their demographic isn’t exactly republican/conservative.

No matter what your political perspective however, a ‘liberal’ approach to sharing and editing information is surely a good thing. By comparison, conservapedia is difficult to sign up to, restricted by rules prescribing ‘conservative’ content, and specifically tailored for a niche political in-group. It is not interested in debate, but spin. In short, conservapedia is Stalinist.

Apparently, wikipedia is also too ‘Anglophile’. Spelling is lambasted (Labour/Labor) as are ‘obscure’ english phenomena such as ‘first class degrees’ or ‘baronets’. The example chosen by the conservapedians is the wiki entry for Henry Liddell.

In summary, the article is bad because it contains English spellings, and obscure English monarchial titles and epithets, such as Lord or degree. Here, for conservapedians is a quick explainer:

1. Baronet and Lord are forms of peership. Holders of these titles sit in the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK’s Parliament. They are much like your senators, except that God chose their families many centuries ago to rule over us.

2. A degree is a qualification people get when they go to university. Clever Americans get them too. A double first degree is a first class degree – the best you can get.

3. A vice-chancellor of a university is the same as what you may know as the President of a university.

Now I have some complaints of my own. I have some concerns about the wiki entry for Edward Everett – a contemporary of Lidell’s as the President of Harvard University. Frankly his entry is waaaay to Americanophile and contains terms I couldn’t possibly understand like ‘United States Senate’ or ‘Congressman’. The article is full of American political jargon and obscure terms.

Basically, conservapedians are concerned with one thing, ensuring that content of online encyclopedia’s published in America’s name conforms with American nationalism; an American worldview both insular and historically grotesque.

Conservapedia would be a pretty damning indictment of the land of the free if I didnt remind myself that it was Americans that created wikipedia too.

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