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13 April 2007

Dizzy leads the way…

As one of the political bloggers breaks as story that gets picked up in the mainstream plus a row ab

By Adam Haigh

A leading political blogger known as Dizzy, was driving the news agenda this week with the likes of Channel 4 and The Times lapping up his wake.

On his blog, Dizzy Thinks, he broke the story on Wednesday of the first signs of Gordon Brown’s leadership campaign. The production company Silverfish TV, responsible for the ‘Dave the Chameleon’ advert, has bought the gordonbrown4leader.com web address.

Silverfish TV have said they are not working for Gordon Brown or the Treasury and merely bought it for when he officially declared his candidacy.
Channel 4

Credit has to be given to bloggers who break stories. Guido Fawkes raised this point when he took on Michael White and Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight two weeks ago – documented by my colleague on this blog review.

Dizzy also reported this week how a landmark ruling in the courts could mean that bosses who monitor their staff’s emails could be breaking European laws. This article highlights the need for companies to have properly drawn up usage policies for their employees email accounts, otherwise they may be breaching European human rights laws.

Oliver
Kamm’s article
on the Guardian’s Comment is Free blog caused quite a stir this week. Kamm claims political blogs are full of errors and that they “poison healthy debate.”

One reaction to the article came from Luke Akehurst who said: “But attacking political blogging as a medium because you don’t like Guido is about as rational as attacking all political coverage in newspapers because you don’t like Richard Littlejohn.” He might just have a point.

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And in response to Kamm’s piece, DocSilver said: “As blogs mature, and the more irresponsible are winnowed out by the rather Darwinian process of operating in an unsheltered environment, the quality of what is offered has steadily increased.”

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