March 26, 2009

Meanwhile, Someone In Europe Still Has Some Balls

Namely, Daniel Hannan.

The internet has changed politics - changed it utterly and forever. Twenty-four hours ago, I made a three-minute speech in the European Parliament, aimed at Gordon Brown. I tipped off the BBC and some of the newspaper correspondents but, unsurprisingly, they ignored me: I am, after all, simply a backbench MEP.

When I woke up this morning, my phone was clogged with texts, my email inbox with messages. Overnight, the YouTube clip of my remarks had attracted over 36,000 hits. By today, it was the most watched video in Britain.

 ...

How did it happen, in the absence of any media coverage? The answer is that political reporters no longer get to decide what's news. The days when a minister gave briefings to a dozen lobby correspondents, and thereby dictated the next day's headlines, are over. Now, a thousand bloggers decide for themselves what is interesting. If enough of them are tickled then, bingo, you're news... And jumbo thanks to all the American bloggers: you chaps are way ahead of us in this regard.

 

Posted by: eddiebear at 11:43 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 185 words, total size 1 kb.

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
13kb generated in CPU 0.0107, elapsed 0.1287 seconds.
61 queries taking 0.123 seconds, 133 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.