I’m glad that most of the British bloggers aren’t doing much in the way of ‘war blogging’ and I hope it stays that way.
I spent a bit of time this morning checking out the American blogs that are linking away on every bit of news they can find and to be frank it is not very impressive.
Given the profusion of real-time media sources with blanket coverage to the war I really don’t see the point in ‘warblogs’ . If you really need a constant ‘fix’ of news on the war (and I am not at all convinced anyone really does) you are not going to miss much by following 24 hour news channels or their related websites.
For me, blogs are simply about opinions and they proved to be a very useful addition to ‘big media’ during the pre-war debate. I have no doubt blogs will come back into their own after war. But for the moment I am just left feeling very uncomfortable about war junkies who seem to be transfixed to coverage of the battles.
Who among the bloggers can seriously offer a credible analysis of what is going on? Who honestly cares what some webhead thinks about the battle at Basra?
There is also a real danger of people publishing things on the spur of the moment when they are in an emotional state.
If, for example, I had decided to blog this morning after a British plane was shot down by a US missile I would have probably gone into an anti-American rant and drawn all sort of wild conclusions about the abilities of our allies and the history of ‘friendly fire’ and American incompetence in wars past. But does anyone really need to read such momentary emotional reaction? I don’t think so.
Likewise do we really need a constant stream of links telling us how there are some wacky idiots among the anti-war movement? Have most of us not realised that by now, including most people inside the anti-war campaigns?
I get the strong impression that many of those bloggers who spend their free-time searching the web for the most stupid slogans and the most outragous opinions are either rather self-righteous people who think the stupidity of others reflects some wisdom on themselves or cynical bloggers who hope their ‘discovery’ will get a link from Instapundit and win a load of traffic for their site.
Ah yes, Instapundit, the most visited blogger in the world, the man invited to panel discussions on the ‘future of blogging’ etc. I read his blog now and then and if he represents the future of some exciting new media then I think I will stick to the professionals thanks.
Here are a couple of his nuggets of wisdom that he felt the world needed to know:
TOMMY FRANKS is doing a good job in his press briefing, which I’m watching at the moment. The reporters, also, don’t look quite as dumb as they did at Rumsfeld’s briefing the other day. Well, most of them.
Thanks for that Mr.Pundit.
Or what about this piece of incisive analysis?
HOW ARE THINGS GOING? Well, pretty well so far. Iraqis are surrendering, the biggest casualties seem to be from accident and friendly fire, not enemy action, and Iraqi leaders seem demoralized while Iraqi citizens seem pleased. Still, it’s too early to say, really.
Yep, sure is buddy.
