Blogging sui generis

I'm not sure how much further this discussion on political blogging has to run, since in his latest post on the subject Oliver has contracted the space he is defending - or so at any rate it seems to me - to an area that isn't actually in dispute between us. In the world of political blog commentary and discussion there is much, he thinks, that isn't up to much. I don't disagree, and I wonder how many people would. If I choose to come back here with a further riposte, it is only because there is a point Oliver now raises that provides a fresh angle on the debate and I want to respond to that.

Before doing so, I briefly indicate the contraction of space that I perceive. In my response to Oliver's Guardian article I said that he gives no evidence for the claim that blogs narrow the range of available opinion in the public sphere. This claim goes beyond saying that much blog discussion is of poor quality, and I doubt that it is true; but Oliver offers no defence of it by way of actual evidence. Equally, he doesn't explain why the fact that blogs draw - are 'purely parasitic' - upon the more established media matters, why it disqualifies or disables those writing on blogs from providing worthwhile comment - as he also doesn't meet the other point I made in the same connection, namely that there is evidence, even if it is more limited, of journalists drawing on material they have found through reading blogs.

Oliver's focus is now more narrowly on the poor quality of much blog discussion, but this is a puzzle since those who have taken issue with him haven't sought to deny that. He writes:

[M]y friends whom I've linked to observe that there are good blogs and bad blogs, and that it makes no sense to talk of a homogeneous medium. I disagree. There are good blogs, but it is an act of faith to suppose that good blogs will determine the practice of the blogosphere. I see no evidence that this is true and some evidence against.

The logic of this is odd: those who argue that the blogosphere isn't a homogeneous medium aren't suggesting that good blogs determine general practice, since that is precisely a homogenizing mechanism.

The new element in Oliver's latest post is this. He endorses a passage from Howard Jacobson in which the latter says 'We professionals are partly to blame for conniving in the fallacy that everyone's views are worth listening to' and laments what he sees as the contemporary 'overproduction of opinion'. Now, it is possible to think - and I am confident that both Howard and Oliver do think - that everyone is entitled to have and to express a view on matters of public concern, even while not thinking that every view is equally worth paying attention to, and believing that some are not worth paying attention to at all. Some views about some things plainly are not. But think for a moment about the implications of the notion of an 'overproduction of opinion'. Overproduction according to what measure? If everybody without exception gets to express their opinion in a democracy, is that too much opinion? If so, who gets to say who it is that has to shut up?

Oliver picks me up at one point for comparing blog discussion with the public meeting, when his own comparative reference point is the press and broadcasting media; he's judging blogging as a form of citizen journalism. But blogging is sui generis. It may be like citizen journalism in some ways; yet blogs and their audiences can also be seen as micro-communities of bloggers, readers and discussants, virtual segments of the public square in which voluntarily formed collectives, with participants free to come and go, consider issues that they want to consider. What can 'overproduction of opinion' mean in this context? Should all these people stop writing and reading and commenting unless they have been certified as competent? The complaint of overproduction of opinion doesn't sit well with the theme of freedom of opinion, or with the rights of members of a democratic society to assemble as they wish for legitimate common purposes.

And no one is forced to be a consumer.