Lord Hunt, PCC chairman since October, told Exaro in an interview with David Hencke: “At the moment, it is like the Wild West out there. We need to appoint a sheriff.”
His initial plan for online media is to invite bloggers who write on current affairs to volunteer to be regulated by the replacement body for the PCC.
Lord Hunt wants a ‘kitemark’ style badge for bloggers, who will have to pay for the privelige.
When this type of thing was suggested for the papers at last years Editors Cose review it was given no thought at all. I realise that the PCC was Baroness Buscombe then, but still. The idea of regulating blogs was also raised by the PCC then, and the response was a big resounding no by bloggers. How would it work? Who would it cover? It would just be unenforcable etc.
Lord Hunt should concentrate on getting together a proper regulatory process with proper sanctions before trying to widen his remit.
Until then, Lord Hunt can go fuck himself.
Nah, I disagree on this one. The kitemark idea is good one (but paying for it isn’t) because it’d lend a legitimacy that blogs currently lack in the public eye. If a blogger really is honest (this might not work for ol’ Guido) then that honesty will be rewarded.
The removal of the kitemark/badge of legitimacy would be sufficient incentive to keep things on the level. The point is that decent bloggers wouldn’t really need the incentive, but would benefit from having the visible stamp of approval.
Paying for it’s a bad idea—some bloggers, especially those who blog about disability and are on state support, for example—might not be able to afford it.
I did a bit of bloggery about this a while ago: Leveson and a blogging kitemark
most bloggers don’t crave legtimacy, and legitimacy from who? The establishment?
Most blogs are comment, which is slightly different from news. They’re also one-man bands where the threat of legal action is enough to silence them or get an amended.
Bloggers, in my view, don’t need one.
Not in the eyes of the establishment; in thhe eyes of the public, as I said. In my blog post I cite a survey that shows blogs to be the least trusted of all media. But we know that blogs can be a source of specialist information unavailable or unreported in the mainstream media—e.g. CAM (cf. Burzynski). Those bloggers would benefit.
What’s to stop bloggers coming up with fake kitemarks or copying the image off accredited blogs?
That is not difficult to solve.
One solution is to have the image link back to a page on the PCC site that lists blogs involved in the scheme.