Beauty and the Beasts

At the time of blogging almost every journalistic friend on Facebook has altered their status to read something along the lines of "X is a feral beast/has gone feral/is more feral than...." I love it.

Poor old Blair. He tries to make a serious speech about the media's effect on public life and this is the kind of effect he has on the media community. No wonder he complains about us being obsessed with impact over accuracy

On a more serious note I went to the Blair/Reuters speech this morning. Must go to bed because I am exhausted and will blog more tomorrow but what I was struck by was

- Blair's admission that while in 1997 they were thinking in terms of an issue a day for the media, by 2005's election they were thinking in terms of one in the morning, afternoon and another by evening
- The hint that newspapers might find themselves under regulation as distinctions between press and broadcast blur through electronic media.
- The sheer amount of time the media takes up in a politician's life these days. Ah but how did this 24/7 culture come across. Blair seemed to think it just happened and that journalists and politicians were surprised onlookers as rolling news, blogs, the internet happened
- Blair's attack on the Independent as a a "viewspaper" (Simon Kelner must be ecstatic...in fact I bet he runs it on the front page tomorrow*)
- But he didn't differentiate between any different bits of the media as being more feral than others (other than right at the end quoting someone who said the media in Britain were the best at their best and the worst at their worst).

The Guardian's round up on what the papers are saying.....

Nick Robinson (BBC) with link to the speech itself

The verdict of those at the Reuters Institute of Journalism...

And what Adrian Monck said.

Richard Sambrook doesn't seem to have blogged on this (he was showing Dan Gillmor round the BBC yesterday...but both he and Peter Horrocks have joined the Facebook group Feral Beasts of the Media...

*he did...and on pages 2,3,4,5 and a whole of an editorial page....