My Guardian column this week recounts my views on the blogging code of conduct kerfuffle and how this once again causes media to lump us all in together and judge us by stereotypes Don Imus wouldn’t get away with. Full column here. Snippet:
In the end, I’m afraid that O’Reilly’s crusade only gives reporters their latest excuse to slam blogs. It inspired a page-one New York Times headline labelling the crusade “A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs”. I got many calls from reporters wanting to do more stories about our nastiness. So I proved their point and got nasty in return, lecturing them all, arguing that they were viewing the blogosphere as a monolith and a mass when, in fact, it is the place where we finally can speak as individuals. But more important, they were judging us by our worst, which is like saying that the Guardian cannot be trusted because it’s a newspaper, just like those ratty red-tops, or that you are a hooligan just because some football fans are. It is blog bigotry. I growled at them.
No one’s going to tell me not to be disagreeable.
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