Nicholas Jones, former BBC political correspondent, recounting a Royal Television Society event held in June:
Ceri Thomas said the political blogosphere had a resonance in Westminster but it did not have a great purchase outside Westminster. But the Today programme now realised the importance of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. ‘I get more story ideas from Twitter than from anywhere else… it has become the single most useful way to get information although that was not the case during the general election’.
Out: if it bleeds, it leads. In: if the luvvies tweet it, Today will repeat it.
Where once BBC editors would have to wait until the next dinner party to hear the bleeding-heart concerns of like-minded media types, now it’s all instant – news determined by the daily fancies of the right-on metropolitan echo chamber. Same as it ever was, only more so.
(Luckily for the Today programme Stephen Fry hasn’t expressed an opinion on the dropping of the New Black Panther voter intimidation case.)