Hallo, handsome!
I wonder how many of you came across the reports of Andrew Marr’s statements about bloggers at the Cheltenham Literary Festival earlier this week. He is reported to have said that; ‘A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting.’ ‘Citizen journalism,’ he added for good measure, ‘is the spewings of very drunk people late at night.’ Oh well. You’ve got to generate sales/viewing figures, I suppose. But, frothy blather aside, he was making a good point. The content of blogs and websites, especially anonymous ones, is uncontrollable and is therefore a sort of nirvana for the unscrupulous, the irresponsible and the malicious.
Perhaps – but what’s the “solution” to this problem? Remove internet anonymity? Very difficult to do (even the Chinese haven’t completely mastered it) – and it comes with lots of privacy issues. I say it’s better to let people have their say.