Tim Montgomerie is Editor of ConservativeHome.com. In a version of this article for The Business he talks about 18 Doughty Street Talk TV.
Starting a new television station would once have required a Murdoch-sized wallet but the internet revolution has swept away the old barriers to entry. 18 Doughty Street is a new internet-based television station that aims to provide an alternative to mainstream media. It’s the project of some of Britain’s best-known bloggers.
From invisibility only one year ago Britain’s blogs have shown that individual citizens can provide more serious and penetrating coverage of their specialist areas than many jack-of-all-trades journalists working for the mainstream media.
Many journalists appear to be promoted to anchor positions because they look good on TV. The values of the blogosphere are in many ways much more old-fashioned. Appearance is rarely important. The best bloggers move to the top of Google search engines because other bloggers link to them. The number of links a blogger receives reflects the extent to which they amuse, entertain or educate.
If I want to know what is going on in Iraq I go to the online journals written by residents of Baghdad and Basra. The Army Rumour Service website teaches me more about military overstretch than any Parliamentary debate. The best intelligence about waste and bureaucracy in the National Health Service comes from NHS Blog Doctor. Inspector Gadget has the most biting understand of the effects of political correctness on our nation’s police force. My own blog, ConservativeHome, is a more popular and comprehensive blog about Tory politics than the official party website.
The mainstream media looks down on blogs. They sneer at their partisanship and alleged lack of accountability but the old media’s sense of superiority does not have as much basis in fact as they would like. Only last week a leaked account of an internal BBC meeting revealed that the Corporation’s executives have effectively conceded that some of its longest-standing critics have been right all along.
Andrew Marr has admitted that the BBC “is not impartial or neutral.” BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb noted that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it 'no moral weight'. Former BBC Business Editor Jeff Randall was told by a “very senior news executive” that the BBC “believes in” and “promotes” the increasingly controversial idea of multiculturalism. Other BBC executives admitted that the Corporation is dominated by “homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities”, was “anti-countryside” and “more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians."
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