The Hutton inquiry in the UK is proving to be as much a test of journalism as it is of government. Perhaps the weblog model has something to offer here? Polly Toynbee, in the Guardian, points out the hypocrisy of the outcry over inaccurate journalism: “which of us would escape a walloping if asked to open our notebook scribbles to the searchlight of prosecution interrogation, every word examined for absolute clarity and veracity?” Now that an army of bloggers – writers of journals, so de facto – journalists, have no sub editor, editor or proprietor to answer to (let alone check that they are keeping short-hand notes in spiral bound notepads), are we going to drown in a sea of spurious allegations and downright lies? I would argue that we are less likely to than when respectable news came from those nice gentlemen at The Times. There are two ways…
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