The right message but the wrong messenger

A case of the pot calling the kettle black or he who lives by the sword dies by the sword?

Excuse the cliches but Tony Blair waits until the dying days of his premiership to bite the hand that fed him.

Before we all get too hung up on the messenger,perhaps we should reflect that the message has an element of truth.The media can be sensationalist.It operates in a highly competitive environment where profit margins are being pushed to the limit and news sells.

The Prime Minister's speech at Reuters yesterday where he accused the media of acting like feral beasts,and in a competitive 24 hour environment of sacrificing balance for impact journalism,has certainly roused the media community.

No more so than Mr Kelner at the Independent whose paper appeared to take the brunt of the attack and dedicates his front page this morning to a vindication of his paper's policy of opinion

"our editorial approach, and the values that underpin it,
have come under attack from the Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

"

He continues

What clearly rankles with Mr Blair is not that we
campaign vociferously on certain issues, but that he doesn't agree with our
stance. What if we had backed the invasion of Iraq (like, for example, we
supported the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone)? Would he then be
attacking our style of journalism? Of course not. We are unapologetic about our
opposition to Iraq, the biggest foreign policy folly of our age, and we shall
continue to hold him and his government to account.

The paper's founding editor,who appeared on Newsnight yesterday evening espousing the same argument writes that

"Mr Blair is right that technology has transformed the
media in the past 20 years. Once there were three TV stations, now there are
hundreds. Once the news was over by 10.30 pm, now it continues 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. Once there were distinct media forms, now they all merge on
the internet. Blogs? Nobody had heard of them 10 years ago. Now there are 70
million."

But argues that the pressure is not different to any where else,the problem has he sees it is that

"Mr Blair's governments have constantly responded to
media pressure by making rapid, unconsidered policy announcements. And that in
turn is why so much legislation has been hastily presented to Parliament, often
poorly prepared, debated too swiftly and then found faulty in
practice."

The Guardian's leader says Right sermon, wrong preacher

There is an easy response to Tony Blair's lecture on
the failings of the media, and some will seize on it. It is to accuse the prime
minister - the master (some will say) of half truths, evasion and spin - of
breathtaking hypocrisy and an almost clinical lack of self-awareness. Well, yes.
But Mr Blair's heartfelt homily deserves a more serious response. His words will
have struck a sympathetic chord, not simply among people in public life,
frustrated at the way their words and deeds are mediated, but among a broad
section of readers and viewers as well. Much of what he said was true, and it
took some courage to say it, a courage that was doubtless easier to draw on amid
the last embers of a political career.

But it argues

It also does not mean that Mr Blair has not got
important things wrong, including missing some crucial parts of the overall
picture. A speech about the British media which does not pay tribute to its
strengths falls into the very trap - of painting the world in black and white -
which is part of the prime minister's own charge sheet.

Peter Wilby says Blair still doesn't get it in the same paper

More widely, Blair grossly underestimates the role of
politicians in changing political coverage. His speech yesterday was a rarity:
it wasn't trailed in advance. But consider how often you see stories saying that
a minister "is expected to say today:

Perhaps this is the problem.The speech should be listened to and noted but it is difficult to listen when it comes from the man who at least is partly responsible for the present state of affairs.He acknowledged in his speech this to be the case but 10 years on Mr Blair it is too late to change now.

Finally for now

The comments of New Statesmen editor John Kampfner are worth noting

“ Blaming the media is the modern equivalent of
shooting the messenger. But sometimes the messenger deserves a good shooting.
As a former feral animal, I have witnessed politicians getting increasingly
frustrated that nothing they say gets reported straight. I would scan government
reports and speeches to find the one line that shows it in its worst possible
light. The root cause is that Britain has the most competitive print media in
the world, and the desperate hunt for readers means we can’t afford detached
aloofness.

THIS WILL NO DOUBT RUN AND RUN ..........................