Brit twit wants to regulate conversation
See updates, below.*
The head of the UK’s Press Complaints Commission — which is an oddity to my American free-speech, First Amendment, independent sensibilities — wants there to be a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers.
What’s the appropriate British word for that? Bollocks, I believe.
Here’s someone else who doesn’t understand what blogs are. They are people talking. Do you suggest you should regulate the speech of people over the phone and set up a complaints commission to deal with that? Or on the street? Or in bed? It’s conversation, fool. Believe it or not, bloggers don’t want to be newspapers. They want to talk. That’s not controllable and that is precisely why it has exploded and why the deposed controllers in media and regulation are so scared of it. But codes and commissions are not the answer. Listening is. If you don’t like what you hear, click away and reply because you can now, without having to go through a commission to do so.
: The Times of London sums up blog reaction to this foolishness over there in its fine comment blog, concluding:
But in the end sanity triumphs and truth outs. The blogworld doesn’t need codes of conduct and regulation because human societies, when free, have a natural tendency to what a clever Austrian called spontaneous order. It would be hilarious though for the State to give regulation a go, just to watch the mauling and the quickest u-turn in history.
: * LATER CLARIFICATION: I heard from Tim Toulmin, head of the PCC, who said that the BBC story didn’t represent him properly. When I emailed him what I was saying — that blogs, like other conversations, can’t be regulated — he agreed.
: * AND MORE: Toulmin objects to the headline. I recant it. He says in email: “If I had said what I was originally
reported to have said I’d agree with it.” But he did not. So he is not a twit.
Tags: Howard_Stern, interactivity, newspapers
November 29th, 2006 at 11:40 am
If a blog is really just speech, like conversation on the street corner or in bed, then it seems unreasonable to ask the courts to protect anonymous sources.
Are bloggers asking to have it both ways?
November 29th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Jeff, you’re talking about a dying nanny state. OF COURSE they want to regulate the speech of people over the phone, on the street, in bed, etc.
November 29th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
This is just sad. Big Brother is trying to grow…
November 29th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Actually the correct response is…
BLOODY HELL!
November 29th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Stop the presses! Jeff Jarvis thinks that the British are trying to REGULATE conversation!
Or, uh, wait…Jeff, have you ever heard of etiquette? Manners? That kind of thing? You know, voluntary codes of conduct for conversation?
If anything, you prove that it pays to be a moron in this country.
And, please, if you’re going to delete me, don’t do it because it’s your “house” or something like that. After all, you wouldn’t want to regulate conversation now, would you?
November 29th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
Well, Ethan, there is no code of conduct for my dealing with my neighbors. I need no regulation for that. Do you? Perhaps you do, calling people morons. Bloody rude, eh? Delete you? No, I leave you there in all your regulatory glory.
November 29th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
Folks, relax. The PCC is not a state institution. It’s the UK newspaper industry’s self-regulatory mechanism.
November 30th, 2006 at 3:26 am
[...] BuzzMachine: Brit twit wants to regulate conversation Jeff Jarvis lays into Tim Toulmin’s suggestion for a blogger code of ethics. (tags: pcc blogs bloggers) [...]
November 30th, 2006 at 11:51 am
“The PCC is not a state institution. It’s the UK newspaper industry’s self-regulatory mechanism.”
This is correct. And it’s interesting that a body funded by the newspapers should be seeking to regulate one of its new competitors…
November 30th, 2006 at 10:50 pm
To Jeff: what? English, please.
November 30th, 2006 at 11:11 pm
Ethan, you’ll understand when you’re older.
December 1st, 2006 at 1:40 pm
Yes, I’ll have to lose a few more brain cells before I understand the logic here.
December 11th, 2006 at 7:30 am
[...] See Tim Toulmin, head of the U.K. Press Complaints Commission, responding to the dustup created when he was misquoted as wanting to regulate bloggers. I was among those stirring dust but I corrected that when Toulmin properly complained. Says Toulmin: Last week I read on one of the political websites about some twit who had said that a voluntary code of practice for blogs was needed. How absurd, I thought. Bloggers are hardly a homogenous profession; they operate in a naturally self-regulatory environment where inaccuracies can quickly be corrected by other posters; they have (sometimes) transnational followings, yet different countries have different cultural standards; it would be a bureaucratic nightmare to enforce; there is no proven need for one and so on. [...]
December 18th, 2006 at 7:15 am
[...] Consider the experience of Tim Toulmin, director of the Press Complaints Commission, when the BBC reported online that he thought bloggers should subscribe to a voluntary code of conduct, or else there is no redress for errors. I was one of many bloggers who responded tartly. On my site and on the MediaGuardian podcast, I called Toulmin - with apologies, dear readers - a “Brit twit” for thinking that one could regulate this vast conversation, which is what blogs really are. [...]
July 20th, 2007 at 11:16 am
good morning.