Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Friday links 24/7/09

The best thing I've read in ages is here, at Between The Hammer And The Anvil, which says that if blogs really are the future of our public discourse rather than journalism, then we're in for a pretty terrible time:

The form has its upside, allowing snarky, semi-literate smartarses like myself to put buckets on our heads and make like we're miniature Hunter Thompsons until the wife gets home and kicks off mental about the unwashed dishes. At its best, it's a knockabout club for sharp people with a talent for argument. At it's worst, it's a Comment Is Free pissfight about Israel-Palestine - about as edifying as a flock of half-spazzed, one-legged pigeons pecking each other to death over a pile of sick.

It's a truly wonderful rant:

Never mind blogs as a primary news source, I'm struggling to think of a handful of bloggers who would merit even the fabled fifteen minutes of fame. That's particularly ironic, since the vast majority of them certainly deserve chemical castration, and that's being charitable.
Iain Dale's running his annual Blog Awards wankathon as we speak - I defy any reader to deny that the world would be a richer, more rewarding and more just place if each of the top ten writers on his final list had been ripped to pieces by enraged mako sharks three seconds after they logged in to their first Blogger accounts.

In fact my only problem with it is, by being so bloody good, it's kind of self-defeating.

Jamie Sport reports on Richard Desmond's libel defeat:

Richard Desmond, philanthropist, pornographer, adherent of Godwin’s Law, and Great Architect of The Daily Express was jubilant last night after spending a jolly few weeks socking it to silly biographers in the High Court.
Desmond, once described as ‘an appalling man’ by Britain’s most appalling man, told his own newspaper: “It was worth it to stand up in court and set the record straight”, apparently unaware that he’d actually lost the case.

That's based on an abysmally bad story in the Express pretending that everything's all right and that his crushing defeat was actually a marvellous victory. I bet whichever poor hack had to cobble that crap together had to hold their nose while doing it. There's more on Dirty Des over at Paperhouse and Septicisle.

Justin has an excellent review of the latest Harry Potter film here.

There's a marvellous piece by Jon Stewart here which flays alive the idiots who've been talking about Barack Obama's birth certificate. Splendid journalism which rips apart the media's need to keep a crappy story kicking around, even when overwhelmed with evidence that blows it out of the water. Which kind of takes us back to the beginning, and Between The Hammer And The Anvil. Sure, blogs are quite often appallingly bad, but when the competition behaves just as badly, what do we expect? Who is it who's setting the bar so low?

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