(not satire – it’s the UK media today)
You probably won’t have noticed it, but there’s what the military would call a Low Intensity Conflict going on at the moment between social media users – bloggers mainly – and the mainstream press.
And it’s starting to turn nasty.
The attacks on bloggers, Twitter users etc come from an unholy alliance between an establishment seriously concerned about its lack of control over what information the ‘plebs’ can share with each other and professional journalists worried sick about the looming demise of mainstream print media – an industry which had previously been able to guarantee long-term lucrative employment to them but whose very existence is now under threat by social media.
Lord McAlpine’s legal actions against Twitter users and attempts to include blogs in the Leveson legislation are both a result of this conflict and I’m sure there are other bloggers who can confirm my experience of how the mainstream press is reluctantly having to rely more on social media for its sources while at the same time extremely unwilling to acknowledge it.
There is also growing evidence that normal people are turning more and more to social media to air their problems or concerns – knowing if they took their story to the mainstream press they would either be ignored or even worse stitched up by them.
For example would the brave Homebase worker who recently sent me the copy of the internal poster which proved the retailer was using workfare to reduce their payroll costs have been so sure his or her identity would have been kept secret if the mainstream press had got hold of it.
I doubt it.
And when the mainstream press did get hold of the story – they somehow managed to forget (initially at least) to mention it was a blogger the information had been leaked to, not a professional journalist.
However, there is worrying evidence some hacks are starting to turn even nastier in this conflict and are willing to move from attacking bloggers and social media users to attacking the innocent sources of social media news stories themselves.
Recently I wrote a blog post using information from a source who refused all requests for interviews with the mainstream press – this was because the source was (quite rightly) concerned their race might be used against them.
The resulting fury of the mainstream press at being not just pipped to a story but completely excluded from it was so much they decided to try and trash not just me and the story but the sources themselves by accusing them of making the story up, being wrong or just plain lying.
This is unforgiveable.
It seems some journalists don’t care what ‘collateral damage’ they may cause to innocent people in their frantic attempts to do whatever they can to trash social media in order to protect and further their own careers.
They should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
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Related articles by Tom Pride:
Satire like Porn? How 3UK are bringing Chinese-style political censorship of web to UK
AK 47s and swastika flags. The face of today’s Conservative Party?
I hope Lord McAlpine isn’t going to sue me for saying this?
The Day Satire Died. Daily Mail to sue blogger for defamation of character!
Oops! The Daily Mail accidentally supports a fascist party. Again.
How media hacks are desperately trying to keep up with social media – and failing
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Please feel free to comment – you don’t need to register and I’m extremely minimal with the moderating – so please go ahead.
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jaynel62 said:
It’s a downright Disgrace, is there any professional bodies left who actually follow their rules of conduct?? I’m struggling to find one – Well Said Tom xx
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Trevor Warner said:
This should not come as a surprise. Whenever the establishment and their corporate friends feel threatened they resort to underhand tactics and repression to hide the truth. This is one of the reasons the mainstream media are losing out to social media.
It was Lord Byron who referred to journalists as; ‘A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon, A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, Condemn’d to drudge, the meanest of the mean, And furbish falsehoods for a magazine.’
We must all resist these Nazi-style attempts to stifle freedom of speech because once lost it cannot be regained. Keep on the good fight Tom.
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rainbowwarriorlizzie said:
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & POLITICAL JOURNAL.
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Pam Field @earwiggle said:
You are doing a great job, Tom! Keep going! Until they silence us all…. 😦
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chess said:
Thanks Tom. We may be smaller than ‘them’ but there’s more of us……keep on going!
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guy fawkes said:
Nobody is censoring the propaganda used by the right wing press towards the unemployed, sick and disabled but no chance of Mc Alpine payouts for those they have slandered.
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bobchewie said:
@TOM one of the areas where this could and does happen is child sex abuse, ie victims being discredited, we’ve seen that already haven’t we? if people who have suffered that much can be targeted then what hope is there for the rest of us?
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keith sellick (@littlekeithy) said:
You make some goof points about the alliance between authorities and some of the press.
One of the key points to the Leveson debate that looks like being sidelined was the call for a strong right of public redress. On democratic grounds it is quite defensible as it would allow some debate in the pages/websites, ie actually further freedom of speech. But it challenges the commercial right of the few billionaire press owners.
Both the PCC and the government were agreed in their Royal Charter proposal to water down anything offering right to apology, and were seemingly backed by the self-appointed “defenders of press freedom”.
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bobchewie said:
@keith sellick paul dacre is head of PCC ,,also inclusion london were included in levenson re portrayal of disability in media..they’ve dropped that bit..plus the media is using levenson as scapegoat so that they can blame it for not naming names of arrestees in child sex abuse cases , sadly the police are playing same game..
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guy fawkes said:
PCC is no Police Constable Commission that’s for sure.
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