A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother's basements and ranting. They are very angry people.
OK - the country is full of very angry people. Many of us are angry people at times. Some of us are angry and drunk. But the so-called citizen journalism is the spewings and rantings of very drunk people late at night.
Umm, Andrew, isn't the above an angry rant? A rant so over the top that it's funny in its own way? And are you really the person to be claiming physical superiority over bloggers? Isn't this how you appeared to one of your fellow journos:
It is reassuring to see Andrew Marr devouring a plate of thick, rare-beef sandwiches. He looks so worryingly iron-deficient that he should probably have them on prescription.
His skin is the colour of a household candle and his body as tenuously constructed as one of those elastic-jointed wooden toys that collapse when you press the base. It is many years since his light dusting of hair was not a subject for melancholy.
What triggered Andrew Marr's hostility? It seems that bloggers like myself are impacting on sales of mainstream newspapers:
The former newspaper editor pointed out that established newspapers were suffering as people turn to the internet.
It was a sad fact that the media would be employing fewer journalists as sales of hard copies declined, he said.
Perhaps Andrew Marr should ask himself why so many people are turning to alternative sources of news and commentary. Couldn't it have something to do with the liberal bias of the mainstream media?
Andrew Marr was political editor of BBC News from 2000 to 2005. In 2006 he admitted,
The BBC is not impartial or neutral ... It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias
So what are those of us who don't like liberalism to do? Isn't it likely that we'll seek out alternatives?
Consider some of the online reactions to Andrew Marr's comments:
Chris: Actually, the comfortable world of privileged and self-serving liberal dominance that allowed the likes of Marr to preclude the non-PC from the mainstream media has come to an end. This is just the dying whinge of the dispossessed.
Daj: Of course Marr doesn't like Citizen Journalism, as it means that people don't have to rely on the propaganda from people like him and 99.9% of the BBC's News & Current Affairs department.
Joe: Of course one advantage that Marr's 'amateur hacks' do have is that they are not in the pocket of the political establishment.
Dave: I'll take citizen journalism any day of the week over the biased propaganda that Marr's been spouting all his working life.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim that the mainstream media is dying. It remains a powerful influence on society. But it's a lot more possible now than it was 20 years ago to get alternative political commentary. And that is something that Andrew Marr, with his ill-chosen taunts, clearly finds unsettling.
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