Posted by ALP on November 4, 2009, 9:53:50 Link: Monbiot Cif piece - comments
I think the Guardian's CiF section must get a huge audience. 807 comments in one day for a recent Monbiot piece. My blog got over 1,000 hits from it in the morning alone - from a link in one of the comments (which itself got 280 recommendations). What percentage of people even bother scrolling down to the comments? And out of those, what proportion would click on a link buried in a long (and somewhat off-topic) comment?
In his previous CiF piece Monbiot wrote that Blair is a “mass murderer”, “contemptuous of democracy” who “greases up to wealth and power and lets the poor go to hell”, etc. And I assume that this had a massive web audience - way above the Guardian (newspaper) readership, perhaps. So, let's say that 100,000 or more people saw Monbiot's piece on the web. Many of these readers may live in other countries, perhaps the US. Perhaps some of them are not accustomed to seeing Great Democratic Leaders and Friends of America described as mass murderers? And they could equally have read something from the BBC website about Blair's mission to bring democracy to... or some such bull. So is it a "disaster for progressive change" when Monbiot wrote that Blair was “contemptuous of democracy”, etc, in the Guardian? Would that be an insightful take on the Propaganda Model? Answers on a postcard to Prof Chomsky...
Message Thread:
« Back to thread