Just because it's Blair that's saying something...

That doesn't mean it isn't true. Like when he talked about the corrosive influence of the meeja. The response has been pretty much of the, "Well he would say that, wouldn't he?" variety - nicely illustrated by Steve Bell's cartoon below:



Fair enough, except for one thing; I'm afraid Blair has a point here. Jamie K writes that it is:

"Interesting that when Blair attacks the meeja generally he only mentions by name the smallest and weakest paper, and the one least likely to serialise his memoirs when they appear."

Yes, yes - but let's not overlook the fact that it is a good example simply because the Independent is objectively, unbelievably, shit these days. Have you seen their front pages? The stupidity of them literally makes me want to vomit. As someone who used to buy it, who bought the first ever goddam copy and remained a loyal reader for several years, it is seriously painful to watch the tabloid degradation of this once fine liberal paper.

The refusal to consider even for a moment the faint possibility that this might just possibly form even a tiny part of Blair's reasons for criticising this particular example of modern journalism rather makes his point for him, I reckon. Paulie, who should really get down to the business of writing a post rather than depositing them in other people's comment boxes, makes the point rather well:

"To offer 'clear coherent arguments' of the kind you suggest would be a way of condemning yourself to obscurity. And this would leave journalists no option (!) but to spend all of their time with those that are prepared to play the game and give them some decent copy.

You say that the conventional media may be less important today, but it is responding to it's falling importance with desperation. Your journalistic colleagues are more groupthinky and more desperate to make an impact now than they were twenty years ago. They are even bigger gits than they used to be, and that is saying something."

There's a number of different examples I thought of to reinforce this point; I decided to settle on this: Paxman when interviewing politicians with his trademark act of horsey incredulity is, we are told, always asking himself the question, "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" Let's be conservative in our estimation - and I use this expression advisedly - that 99% of the time the lying bastard in the studio is indeed lying his ass off. Do you think Paxo allows for the possibility that just maybe he's being confronted with one of the 1% that isn't lying? Or even the more circumspect possibility that they are only lying some of the time? No - because he refuses as a default position to allow even for the existence of this. And that's the problem that Blair has identified.