The real Benn talks about Twitter

Interesting reading Iain Dale's transcript of part of an interview with Tony Benn in which they discuss Twitter

TB: That’s all fascinating. But you’re the great blogger. You’ve pioneered serious blogging.

ID: I didn’t pioneer it, but I get quite a big readership – about 80,000 people every month, 600,000 last year.

TB: That is real influence.

ID: But even if you only have a few hundred, tell me a politician who wouldn’t like to make a speech to several hundred people every day. I suspect if you were starting out in politics now, you would be a fanatical blogger.

TB: I have thought about that, but you can't write a diary and do a blog at the same time. If you are a diarist you have to be free to do it, and if you are a blogger you have a different audience. A blogger is addressing an audience whereas I am recording what has happened.

I am sure that if this was the start of Benn's career,the great politician would surely recognise the potential of this micro blogging tool for getting his message to the masses

Benn has a twittering imposter

So it turns out that the Twitter Tony Benn is an imposter.

Jemima Kiss reveals the truth

Labour MP Tom Watson has cruelly exposed @tonybenn as a fake.

"I bought him a cup of tea today because he came in for the Queen's speech," explained Watson, the UK's first blogging MP, who had taken the opportunity to congratulate Great Britain's most prolific political diarist on joining Twitter.

"Mr Benn I must say I think it is fabulous that you've set up a Twitter feed."

"But my dear boy - what on earth is a Twitter feed?"

At this point, we imagine the room falling silent as the true horror of the imposition becomes clear.

"Someone is impersonating you on Twitter," said Watson.

"Well, I'll have to get my people onto him..."

Tony Benn on Twitter

More evidence of the power of Twitter.

Tony Benn has now signed up to the medium

I think that he may have been a little surprised by its power

This is something I will have to come back to. I have an early start. Thank you for the welcome. Truly inspirational

Benn-why don't they report how many are starving rather than the Dow Jones

I have just been reading Tony Benn's comments to the Independent on the state of the media.

It's not so much that the media is biased. It's just what they report and what they don't report. We get the Dow Jones Industrial Average every hour. I've never met Dow Jones, but he does work very hard. Supposing every hour they publish how many people are dying of starvation in the world, how many are unemployed, how many are homeless. Debate centres round what we hear, and on the whole, the media represents what I would call a conventional view of everything."

Does he have a point? I think so

Why was the media quiet in the run up to Iraq

As mentioned earlier in the week on this blog,I attended the War media and the Truth conference in London at the weekend.


You can watch the video opening of the conference here,but I have finally got around to putting down some thoughts.



The first speaker at the conference was Tony Benn.In his opening remarks he made the point that information should always be at the core of all decisions.He remarked that journalists have a moral responsiblity to report what is actually happening and explain the alternate arguments.Thus the media should set the agenda.In the run up to the Iraqi war,this was not the case and the agenda was set by government.

Peter Wilby reminded us of a leader that he wrote in the New Statesman during the dossier crisis."Deployed how,where and against whom.

Critical voices on the evidence of weapons of mass destruction were simply not heard.He cites in particular the case of Scott Ridder who was vilified in the press for claiming that the weapons did not exist as being an apologist for Saddam.

As he so aptley put it the headline "Saddam not much of a threat" wouldn't make good copy.


Sami Ramadami,an Iraqi exile talked of his pessimism for the media and described them as being frankly off beat.He dsimissed talk of a conspiracy in the media over the war,instead blaming journalists for having an establishment background.

There was no esrious opposition to the war and the media played the patriotic card once it broke out.Those that questioned it were effectively sidelined.