Recent comments

I don't hold any particular admiration for Fawkes - or for this kind of story - but I do support his right to publish it regardless of the fact that he earns his money from a blog site and not a newspaper proprietor. Stories like this one have appeared and continue to appear in newspaper gossip columns and diary columns every day. This one happens to be about a very senior politician showing a very peculiar lack of judgement. And Fawkes/Staines has done a job of journalism: following a story, standing it up and publishing it. Neither can you really dismiss him as a fly-by-night blogger who will publish any old nonense willy nilly; one reason this has been taken so seriously is that he's established a reputation over a number of years for getting stories right. It's one of the reasons this one continues to lead bulletins and to prompt discussions like this.

I don't agree that Matt Drudge's revelation of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair is comparable. Drudge checked the details of his story before he published it. Crucially, he also alleged an affair between the President and the intern. He didn't leave it to innuendo or rumour to convey an unstated meaning. He wrote what he knew, asserted that it was true and took reponsibility for publishing it.  The point of Guido's blog was to imply an unstated meaning for which he had no firm evidence. You are right that it does not explicitly allege sexual intimacy. It carefully avoids stating what it hopes to convey. This is not an accurate story that has been placed in the public domain against the opposition of establishment journalists. It is a smear. If there is evidence that William Hague has lied about his sexuality then it has not been produced. Hague responded because the smear is dangerous and because it has been placed  in the public domain. When similar rumours were circulated about Gordon Brown, he ignored them entirely for the excellent reason that they were entirely untrue. I suspect that today he would be placed in a similar position to that faced by William Hague. This is not public service journalism. It is evidence of what unmediated amateurs motivated by ideology can do to damage the precious relationship between journalism and representative democracy. Discuss!

You touch on a basic distinction between reporters and bloggers, Alister. If Guido Fawkes -  real name Paul Staines, pictured above -  had been a political correspondent on The Scotsman, Today or Five Live I would not have allowed his story to appear in the form in which he blogged it.  I would not have been content to publish pointed innuendo. I would have insisted on supporting evidence.  Guido is not subject to any system of editorial control or checking. He is a lone wolf operating according to his own conscience.  Many professional journalists argue that this is precisely why journalism is a profession and blogging is not. A blogger can report responsibly, but without a culture of editorial ethics and a system for checking the accuracy of copy there is little to compel him to do so. It depresses me that so many professional publications have followed Guido's story. Many newspapers and broadcasters take the view that because a blogger has placed an allegation in the public domain they are free to repeat it. I find that depressing as well as legally dodgy. That said, there were newspapers that did not run the story this morning. That was not because they were not aware of Guido's story. It is interesting that this case of 2+2=7 appeared on an essentially Conservative blog. Does it, I wonder, hint at the extent of Conservative resentment of the men responsible for their coalition with the Liberal Democrats? There I go blogging instead of reporting. Naughty.       

OK, but if we accept that the meaning can be conveyed without the precise phrase we can go a lot earlier. Pliny the Younger's description of the eruption of Vesuvius is, I suggest, the earliest surviving First Draft.  The nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced dozens before 1943. Try Orwell's description of the suppression of the POUM, Steer in Guernica, Gelhorn in Helsinki, Allen in Badajoz, the older Murdoch at Gallipoli. I could go on and on and on. Jack Shafer takes an excessively literal approach. The anonymous shorthand reporter who recorded the execution of Charles I, including a full account of the king's last words on the scaffold, was conscious of his duty to provide an accurate first draft. The idea precedes the phrase as plainly as human beings experienced sudden inspiration long before we called it a brainstorm.  It does not matter much who invented the phrase. It is descriptive of a phenomenon that existed before it was coined. Important is only the reporter's understanding of his duty to place in the public sphere entirely accurate eyewitness testimony and authoritative evidence.   

 You're a third year student now, surely you could at least embed a map for those not too good with directions? :)

I like Halliday's piece too, James. It makes a pretty decent Media Guardian lead for the August silly season; a lot less predictable than the anticipated 2000 words on Richard Desmond's takeover of Channel 5.  

...though that Sebastian Vettel has been guilty of similar swerving this season at Silverstone and Germany in the past three races. Also, Ayrton Senna was often guilty of erratic driving and with a well announced intent, ie Prost at Japan in 1990.

So this does give Schumacher a defence in that he is not the only one who does it. As I forgot to mention it in the article, I think it's a point worth raising. However, when will racing drivers learn they have a duty to respect each other, spectators and officials? 

Schumacher's actions just highlights the need to stop this recent stupidity of him and Vettel.

this is in the library yet? Suzanne said she had ordered some copies.

I came across him at a conference organised by this organisation last week. He is a very compelling speaker - and made a powerful case for treating the cyberworld with caution, especially where the safeguarding of democracy is concerned.  It was rather amusing when Stephen Coleman (who is a UK politics academic ) waxed on about the wonders of the internet in aiding political participation, but Morozov was having none of it. John Lloyd tried hard  to mediate and almost had to stop them coming to blows. Morozov spoke with passion and incidentally comes from Belarus and seems to know a thing or two about how repressive regimes function.

Nice to hear you're enjoying it. And yeah I suppose the picture does make it a bit more appealing. Nothing like a bit of free advertising. Hope your enjoying your break Tim! 

I did it, Dan. Your blog is a great read, so I think it deserves to be well presented on our front page. After all, making journalism look attractive is one of the ways in which we encourage people to read it. I'm very glad you are enjoying Sky.