Sunday, February 17, 2008

February 11 Media Critique: “ Success: Guardian Removes One-Sided Video”

Well, clearly I credited The Guardian with a bit more backbone than it has, when I said,

But no doubt many brain-dead HR readers will fire off their mistakenly outraged emails to The Guardian where they will be deleted with wonderment at the credulity of the HonestReporting zombies.
I also wrote to The Guardians Readers Editor to ask how they deal with a barrage of emails from an orchestrated campaign like HRs. Siobhain Butterworth will apparently be dealing with the issue in her next column. Should be interesting.

This incident highlights the difficulty faced by serious newspapers in responding to readers concerns when there are pressure groups who knowingly exploit this new trend to increase responsiveness to readers. Given that much content is now freely available, groups like HR can encourage people to send complaints about particular media outlets who they would never read, about articles they don’t bother to read. This latest incident is a case in point. It’s safe to assume that many HR zombies would never read The Guardian as a matter of principle, believing it to be one of those guilty of “anti-Israel media bias”. And they can't have read The Guardians coverage of the Dimona bombing, only HRs email, to call it "one-sided".

It’s a tough situation for editors, one deliberately exploited by the unscrupulous, like HR.


Update:
The Guardian Readers Editor's weekly post is up on CiF.