In defence of bloggers

Here’s something I wrote for the Guardian’s Comment is Free :

At Channel 4 News we enjoy digital engagement. Our website is built for it, we tweet away all day and blog whenever we have something to say. We know our viewers want commentary and analysis alongside their news and our blogs help us give more of that.

Obviously we can’t give opinion in the way bloggers who aren’t also public service broadcasters can, but we enjoy reading other people’s opinions and the best blogs are much more than rants, often breaking stories, too. And anyway, I like reading the occasional rant. But as a blogger if you offer up something to the wider world you should expect people to say what they think of it. Some comments will be thoughtful and encouraging, others will be scathing. And, of course, Andrew Marr is right that people say things online that they wouldn’t dream of saying in person.

But, Marr’s comments about blogs and bloggers seem unfortunately like the very things he describes: “strangely angry and rather abusive”. Having met “the god of Sunday morning” a few times this seems completely out of character. It’s true that flicking through the comment section of some political blogs can easily make you think the blogosphere is populated by obnoxious trolls. But there are plenty of thoughtful, insightful people writing online too: you just need to find them. They might not be household names, or worthy of a slot on Radio 4, but to dismiss them out of hand seems wrong. As for bloggers being “inadequate, pimpled and single”, that’s no way to talk about Jon Snow. He isn’t single.

Broadcasters can’t afford to be out of touch with listeners and viewers. We must connect with an audience that is fast learning how to pick and choose its own schedules, mix and match content and find its own opinions just as interesting as the “commentariat”. The BBC has perhaps the best news website in the world but its journalists are restricted from tweeting or blogging unless approved and many have to be checked by an editor before being published online. It puts on some of the best debates and discussions on the TV and radio, but it rarely invites the viewers into that.

Social media makes talking to the audience and involving them in the process easier than ever. I talk to our viewers through the day on Twitter about how to cover stories, what they like and don’t like – and when it doesn’t fit into 140 characters the blogs give them background and context. We’ve started live-blogging during Channel 4 News now so viewers can both debate the news they’re watching and tell us what they think of how we’re covering it.

Of course, we do have a strategy for all of this, but I prefer to call it “chatting to viewers about stuff”. Sometimes I will even talk to people in the street, who might stop me and want to tell me something. I know this is a radical approach towards professional communication, but it seems to work quite happily.