Msm And Blood In The Water

IN BRITAIN they’ve been enjoying a week of political blood sports. Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s #1 media attack dog got badly mauled in a dog-fight. And had to resign.

Ah, you’ll say. Fourth Estate at work: investigative reporting at its best.

Er, no. It was a blogger, Guido Fawkes, that outed Damian McBride, known to everyone as McPoison.

And why did he out him? Not because of any noble motive but because McBride accused him of being a racist. Here’s Fawkes’ explanation from his article in today’s London Times.

[McBride] took the trouble to read and round up some off-colour and politically incorrect comments left on my blog one Friday afternoon and forward them to my rival Derek Draper for republishing. There on his LabourList blog the cut-and-pasted headline screamed “Racist”. I was tarred as a racist over things not written by me, and that I had not even read.

Sound familiar? Isn’t that what the lefty Canadian human rights commission chappies have been doing, as told by Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn?

Fawkes accused Draper on TV of publishing a smear sent to him by McBride and Draper denied it thrice. That prompted a whistleblower to send emails to Fawkes showing that McBride was planning to set up a website to publish smears about Conservative party leaders.

Funny how politics works, isn’t it? It’s not glorious principle that guides the principals. It’s power and greed and personal pique.

Fawkes goes on to point the finger at Britain’s parliamentary journalists as cowards. They knew about McPoison and his shenanigans, but they did nothing.

For the past five years my blog has squarely blamed lobby journalists for failing democracy. Though the fourth estate may not have a formal constitutional role, its task is real. Journalists are to there to “speak truth unto power”, not trade favours for tittle tattle, not report spin as truth.

Actually, I think that Fawkes (real name Paul Staines) has it wrong. You can’t expect journalists to buck the system. Never could, never will. The only time that journalists will "speak truth to power" is when there is blood in the water. Politicians are into power. When they have power, they use it, and they use it to destroy anyone that stands in their way. What can a journeyman journalist do against that? That’s why journalists always toady to the powerful—until the moment arrives when there is blood in the water. Then they all pile on and we learn that they never liked the guy.

But you have to ask: Why would you call people like that "The Fourth Estate?" The whole notiion of the Fourth Estate is based upon the idea that the media is a power center capable of challenging the other powers, the great estates of the realm. If journalists can’t or won’t do that, why call them the Fourth Estate?

Maybe we’ve got things all wrong. Maybe it is bloggers who should be called "The Fourth Estate."

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.