Diversity over objectivism every time…

Busy day, so I’m a bit late in checking in. Local Democracy is a new group blog that I’ll be contributing some thoughts on politics, democracy and the media from time to time. Paul Evans picks up an piece by Jim Gibney when he complained about the lack of Sinn Fein voices in the BBC when his party is one of the two most predominant voices in politics in Northern Ireland. But Paul uses this (legitimate) gripe to pose a more interesting set of questions:

Is it possible for journalists to really mask their preferences? Should we be asking public broadcasters to go for a ‘diversity’ model of impartiality instead? Would we not be better served by lots of named correspondents with fairly well-known prejudices calling things as they really see them – rather than attempting the charade of even-handedness?

Contrary to the thoughts of some of our commenters views, one of the most exciting aspects of the Cameron Direct event was not the political appeal, the charisma, or even the nuanced messaging. But the fact that we began to in more interesting way what we achieved at times on the US election day: a distributed network of correspondents, all sharing their views via Twitter and the CoverItLive software, in one space.

In effect people were not just able to listen to and report on the speech but talk about it out loud; share judgement and reactions ‘out loud’ as though we were there. For me it was the multiplicity of perspectives that made it work.

De facto, the online distribution systems on the net are diverse and diversifying… As Dan Conover notes:

The great gray battleships of 20th century media are sinking, and the social web is adapting rapidly to fill the spaces they’ll vacate.

Not only should public service broadcasting have more Sinn Fein (and DUP) voices it should seek out a range of voices (from most representative to ‘I’m only representing me’) that bring a diversity of opinion to bare on range of issues and problems.

Categories Uncategorised Tags

We are reader supported. Donate to keep Slugger lit!

For over 20 years, Slugger has been an independent place for debate and new ideas. We have published over 40,000 posts and over one and a half million comments on the site. Each month we have over 70,000 readers. All this we have accomplished with only volunteers we have never had any paid staff.

Slugger does not receive any funding, and we respect our readers, so we will never run intrusive ads or sponsored posts. Instead, we are reader-supported. Help us keep Slugger independent by becoming a friend of Slugger. While we run a tight ship and no one gets paid to write, we need money to help us cover our costs.

If you like what we do, we are asking you to consider giving a monthly donation of any amount, or you can give a one-off donation. Any amount is appreciated.