The BBC Learns To Blog, And Why That's News
Published October 09, 2006
Richard Sambrook is the director of BBC global news and a blogger. Richard's blog is SacredFacts, and subtitled "Something thought to be actual as opposed to invented".
The idea that something out there has such an elevated sacred status, and that it has natural owners, is what really marks the difference between two opposing views of news and in part it's what drives blogs.
First let's say what news is. News, and media creativity in general, are more important than we realise for reasons we don't acknowledge.
They are indeed the cornerstone of our society. The reason: the broad schedule of news and entertainment is a medium that keeps the economy going. You cannot imagine western democracies functioning without ads and you cannot imagine an orderly society without newspapers and TV companies that make the compromises necessary to keep running ads.
What we invent and produce is sold via TV and newspapers. They are not just central to "free speech" but to economic order.
The fragmentation of these mediators, under pressure from IPTV and blogs, is going to have a profound effect on the whole structure of an advanced economy.
Corporations will have to sustain their credibility and promote their brands across thirty or more mediating content types. That means dilution across the traditional ones (which in turn will raise pressure on publicly funded media).
Playing such a central role in every news organisation, including those that don't take ads, and the structure of news gathering and decision making, is necessarily a compromise.
It's a compromise that has worked very well for us for 150 years. Its nature is: maintain equilibrium.
News organisations cannot ask fundamental questions about how our system operates - for example, about how our food supply and pharmaceutical industries have created a moral panic over weight, eating, and health, and indeed seem to have converted the human body to a playground for officially sanctioned but potentially dangerous drugs (Vioxx, statins, chemo, antacids, SSRIs).
News and current affairs can, for example, do the SSRI story but they can't do the fundamental inquiry into how and why our society has changed into one that is fundamentally drug dependent.
It is also necessarily elitist. Attempts to broaden the media franchise (the BBC ran some in its community division) have never been pushed far enough or given sufficient prominence, and they're easily folded. But you cannot spread power without raising many alternative viewpoints and disturbing equilibrium.
- The BBC Learns To Blog, And Why That's News
- Published: October 09, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Sci/Tech: Internet, Sci/Tech: Blogging, Culture: Media
- Part of a feature: Content 2.0
- Writer: Haydn Shaughnessy
- Haydn Shaughnessy's BC Writer page
- Haydn Shaughnessy's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
I hate the idea of BBC, CNN, FOx and any other news outlet looking to bloggers or even worse becoming bloggers. We bloggers are opinionated and always write from a point of view. We cannot be unbiased because for the most part we are our own editors and are answerable only to ourselves.
The news should be just that: news. They are suppossed to be the sources we bloggers use, not the other way around. The media are getting lazy I think. Opinion is easier than news which is why blogs are so big.
The disruption the internet is bringing to news has more facets than, in my view,news organisations want to acknowledge.
We know organisations like the BBC, The Guardian, the Washington Post etc will incorporate user generated content and blogging conent - because it's free.
Why look that gift horse in the mouth?
The real test is whether you allow it to broaden and deepen coverage.
Whether you use it to tackle some of the fundamental issues - but in short they are the ones that have us hooked on medicine, hopelessly divided in terms of wealth and attitude, suffering from food, once again at war, unenlightened by a partial press, incapable of collective self-reflection....I'll maybe map a few of those out on my blog tomorrow.
I see the blog community as a way to escape the heavily politicized traditional media and get all sides of an issue.
All too often, main stream media seeks to be, rather than report, the story.
Bloggers wishing to be taken seriously continue to link their stories to verifying reports in established media. I believe we can, and should, benefit each other.
Donnie,
I agree mostly with your blogger/media relationship, but the success of the blog is making the media forget their job and causing them to do ours. I do not want to tune into CNN or BBC to tell me what bloggers are saying. I want them to give me the news and I will goto blogs to see what the bloggers are saying.
There is currently too much commentary in the news and not enough news. By the media outlets turning more and more to blogs we will see less and less fact finding its way into the news.
thanks Haydn, fascinating, and thanks for dropping by Richard, very happy to hear from you. I think the key to it all is to maintain rigorous standards of reliability while allowing a bit more of the writer's personality into the reporting. I think that is the hybrid we are headed towards. Opinion is everywhere in what has always been called news, so this new way may be a bit more honest. But reliability and openness are critical to make this go.
Welcome to Blogcritics.
You'll be happy to know if this site does review some of the networks hottest shows -- including a certain Doctor.
I think brad and Donnie have an important point though Eric. Many talented people have been excluded from the media franchise for decades so it's worth saying let's do this on our terms.
sure, the ground-up rather than top-down aspect is crucial to the independent frame of mind
As blogging matures and the shake-out from "the golden age of folding newspapers" begins to settle; I don't think we quite know what will emerge. But there is hope for more truth, more immediacy, more "you are there" and, with luck, at least as much responsibility as there was with more traditional forms.
BC is an example -- a lot of opinion and more and more news. The 'Net allows those little links to take people directly to primary sources and video may allow them to be there quicker and closer. Professionalism may even crop up as blogger aggregations like BC continue to evolve.
And newspapers, tv companies and magazines continue to emerge as part of the blogosphere. Web 4.0 could really surprise us.
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Haydn
Nobody should think the title of my blog means I believe that news has "natural owners" - quite the opposite is true which is why the disruption the internet is bringing to news organisations is in my view overwhelmingly a good thing. However I do believe that we need to live by more than a cacophony of opinion alone and that some rational and fairminded and objective (based on evidence) debate is a good thing. Hence the reference to CP Scott's famous quote (which needs to be read in full!)