Nick Cohen: Who would you rather trust - the BBC or a blogger? | Comment is free | The Observer.
Just Google Nick Cohen.
You will see him all over the place. But the question is - if Nick is of the left-wing persuasion, just how left is he?
In his books he questions what’s left? I turn that around and say that to him. I look upon myself as left-wing, yet I am a liberal, too. So where the hell does that leave me? It makes me biased that’s for sure - but it makes me biased in a liberal-left way - so I am not quite sure why Nick would be bringing the BBC into all this - other than to say that the BBC is now nothing more of a monolith of the right - which is something I have been saying for a while.
That will get those who are right-wing Tories in a total tiz - they would have us believe that the BBC is some socialist arm of the old Militant party.
But, I am biased that way because I want the BBC to do real reporting like it used to do - so do me and Nick agree? Well to some extent - but in others - certainly not.
Because good ol’ Nick says:
Why, then, mourn the passing of the hack? The best reason for wanting my colleagues to survive is that serious reporters and broadcasters offer a guarantee that what they say is true. If they stray, their editors impose journalistic standards and insist on objectivity. They may not have the best or fullest story or the most vivid account, but readers should be able to assume their work is reliable, while a blogger’s commitment to objectivity can never be assumed.
Firstly - why should bloggers be objective? Little one man band blogs like this are well under the radar and are never quoted on the BBC - or any other mainstream media for that matter. Reymac posts his pieces, I post mine - we are, so I can gather, of a similar political opinion - but we are nowhere near The Huffington Post.
We don’t get paid either - so what part of blogging etiquette demands of us to be objective? Just because the world is on a cusp of change and papers cannot compete with bloggers? See The DailyKos, The Huffington Post, Thinkprogress, Open Democracy, NO2ID - are they biased? I would say for the most part - yeah.
Journalists like Nick have greater opportunities than us mere scribblers off the MSM - he makes his money blogging and writing comments - and writing books about how left he is and how the left have lost their way - in his view.
How objective is that? How fair is that he has the free advertising by name recognition and people like me have none - so, I can’t get published or even get an agent - or it could just be I am a shit writer.
As I say, Google him.
The technological changes that are wrecking the profitability of newspapers and commercial TV in all advanced countries mean that many will think hard before sending a reporter to cover the next coup in Thailand. The BBC, whose £3bn income is guaranteed by the state, should have no comparable worries.
Yet far from looking like confident men and women ready to fill the gaps left by their retreating competitors, BBC journalists are a harried and miserable bunch.
This week, they will strike over a threat to jobs in Asian branches of the World Service. Despite the obscurity of the cause, union members voted 77% in favour of action because they fear that they will be next.
And, as a person who says he is of the left and that the left has lost its way, why would Nick think that this is a bad thing? Indeed I agree that the BBC journalist should, for the most part be feared - not only overseas but at home - yet they are not - why? In my view because the BBC has, like the NHS, become nothing more than a political football for some to kick around and cry foul when they feel their feelings have been hurt. This can’t be said by The Guardian or Observer - they want readership and Nick is bitching about the £3bn the BBC raises by draconian measures - does Nick want that for the papers he writes for?
The BBC is so uninterested in content that it is sacking its content providers or journalists as we used to call them.
The paradox of the BBC’s strategy is that the more it spends on expanding into cyberspace the less it has to say.
Is it, Nick?
What about World Have your Say that is broadcast daily by the world service - funded by the foreign office, not by the BBC licence fee - go ask them, they will tell you as they told me, I am sure Ros Atkins would love to talk you about that.
Maybe, but I could be well off the mark here - some bloggers do a little more research on what they are biased blogging about and why people want to read them rather than just spouting stuff that isn’t strictly true. But we can’t say that - because editors always make sure what you have to say IS true, as quoted above.
Nick Cohen’s piece in The Observer/Guardian will get thousands of hits because it is online and in those papers/online version - this will get about twenty. So how can us little blogger be putting journalists out of work or undermining them? We can’t and we don’t.
Maybe Nick has been speaking to Hazel Blears? Who knows.
Posted in Bias, Blah!, Blogs, Comment, Media, Personal Opinion, WTF! Moment
