Guido on Newsnight

I have to say I did like Guido's piece on Newsnight tonight. You can watch it here.

His point was that in order for journalists to get their interviews and stories they had to play soft with politicians, and to some extent his interviewers backed that up. If you get at a politician too much they will stop talking to you.

It has to be said I would not enjoy talking to difficult people too much either.

Nick Robinson said that yes, they do work with politicians, but when something big comes up, they do ask the difficult questions. This probably explains why the BBC did not run the Gordon Brown picks his nose story, because whilst amusing it serves no vital media purpose, but they do ask awkward questions, (though perhaps less often than they should).

Guido thinks they should be tougher, whilst Nick Robinson and others get to explain their position. This seems to have put Nick Robinson's nose out of joint a bit though I can't think why. He has his position, Guido has his, both got an airing, looks fine to me. I see, understand and sympathise with both sides of the argument.

Then we had a debate with Jeremy Paxman, Micheal White of the Guardian, and Guido who was in a separate studio and in the dark. Guido does this to protect his anonymity. I say fair enough. It is not just a question of what his name is it is also what he currently looks like. I know who he is, and have met him so know what he looks like. I could go a name drop to make myself look big, only I don't think it would work, and I think it would be very rude as well.

Micheal White then seemed to get great enjoyment from constantly giving Guido's real name. I have to say I thought that made Michael White look a bot of a prat. It is certainly true that Guido did not appear as confident a media performer as the other two but then they have had more practice. I wish I now had not voted for him to appear.

It seems to me that Micheal White is as a dead tree journalist afraid of bloggers. He seems to put them down solely as places for gossip and comment, without coming up with any thing new. It is certainly true that a lot of political bloggers do mostly comment on what is in the news, or in press releases and so on, but sometimes they break stories or move them right up the agenda. For example the story about Cherie Blair signing a copy of the Hutton report to auction and raise money for the Labour party was out there but got very little coverage until Guido and Iain Dale kept on plugging it.

Iain Dale and I both broke different versions of the BBC injunction story, whilst Guido broke stories about Two shags Prescott. So it happens.

Guido has this here.