Brown and the drugs question
Remember “Smeargate”, the plot by Labour spin doctors to create a website specifically to circulate unsubstantiated dark rumours about the personal lives and most intimate secrets of Tories including Cameron and Osborne?
Fast forward to the Marr show on Sunday when Andy asked the Prime Minister if he was on strong anti-depressants. This is a story now doing the rounds in Westminster and, just as with Tony Blair’s mysterious heart flutter, might impact on Brown’s ability to do the job. So fair game?
But leave aside the debate over the relevance of such medical conditions to an individual’s ability to “get on with the job”.
What is just as interesting is the fact this entire rumour started with a single post on an obscure blog, and was based on alleged remarks about Brown’s diet from a Downing Street insider which led the blogger to conclude this must be the consequence of his being prescribed powerful anti-depressants.
Let’s also leave aside the fact that other bloggers with just as much claimed medical knowledge insist the specific drugs in question have not been widely prescribed for twenty years.
The story might have stopped there if it had not been for the fact that bloggers – and, in the first instance it was right-wing bloggers like Guido and Iain Dale – ran with it.
Dale, for example, did the old trick of criticising those who were attacking Brown on the basis of his alleged ill-health, stating, if the story was true, the Prime Minister deserved sympathy not ridicule. It ensured the story got another good show in the blogosphere and, inevitably, was then taken up by the mainstream media.
So, here is a classic example of a dark, unsubstantiated rumour about the Prime Minister’s personal life that owes its existence entirely to a single blog. The fact that it fitted the narrative about Brown’s character only ensured it gained even greater exposure.
Whether all this is a good thing or a bad thing is now the debate raging in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
No one is suggesting this was a deliberate plot like smeargate. If anything, it shows such coordinated campaigns are unnecessary, a single blog posting can do the trick.
None the less, Damian McBride would have been proud.
[...] up in arms about the matter (and here, where he points us towards journalist Nick Assinder’s criticisms of Marr [...]
[...] worth quoting is former PoliticsHome, BBC, Express and Mail lobby correspondent, Nick Assinder, who left no-one in any doubt that he thought Andrew Marr was wrong, and pinned the blame firmly on [...]
To be fair … said this on 29/09/2009 at 09:42 |
One wonders whether this is a problematic of blogging, it is too often driven by memes not facts. But then one also wonders whether this is not the problem of the blogosphere hierachy, namely Guido and Dale, we need new leaders.
Nice blog design by the way Nick
[...] proud by Sunny H September 28, 2009 at 7:11 pm Former BBC journalist Nick Assinder has written a stinging attack on Andrew Marr’s legitimisation of right-wing smears by asking whether [...]
Liberal Conspiracy » Andrew Marr – would make Damian McBride proud said this on 28/09/2009 at 19:11 |