Politicians and people v MSM

Rory Cellan-Jones | 09:30 UK time, Monday, 26 April 2010

So far, it's been a much better election for the mainstream media - or the "MSM" as they're described by an often contemptuous blogosphere - than you might have expected. The bloggers hoped they would boss this campaign, breaking stories, setting the mood, and leaving the flat-footed old media types trailing in its wake.

But the newspapers, and in particular the broadcasters have proved far more influential, with the TV debates dwarfing every other aspect of the campaign.

What I have noticed in recent days is the way both politicians and voters have used new-media methods to take on the mainstream media and dispute their version of the truth.

The latest example came yesterday when the Conservative Joanne Cash took great exception to an article about her in the Sunday Times by a journalist called Camilla Long. Now the piece doesn't appear any more hurtful than much other Sunday journalism, but Ms Cash was offended by remarks about members of her team.

Five years ago, she might have contacted the paper and hoped for a right to reply the following week. But instead she went online and started tweeting. A string of messages attacked the journalist's professionalism, her intelligence and her attitude to other women. "I wonder how she sleeps at night" and "she's a journo who never writes a good word about anyone or anything" were typical.

She attracted support too from another Twitter user who considers herself a victim of Camilla Long's prose, the government's digital-inclusion czar Martha Lane Fox, who said: "havent seen her article but thank you :) she was one of the laziest journos have ever met - ignore it. u rock."

I have contacted Camilla Long to seek a comment, but have not heard back yet.

Another politician who hit back yesterday against the mainstream media was Labour's Tom Watson, a former minister and close confidant of the prime minister. He felt that a story in the Sunday Telegraphsaying he'd been excluded from Labour's election campaign was inaccurate. So he responded with a post on his blog - among the most read of any politicians' online offerings - explaining why he is campaigning locally and not at party HQ. Far more people will have read the original story - but the many journalists who follow Mr Watson's blog and Twitter feed will have seen his rebuttal very swiftly.

Then there's the wider revolt against mainstream media coverage of Nick Clegg. This started before the Clegg surge began, with sporadic complaints from Lib Dems about the lack of coverage for their party. Then, when the papers started running negative stories last week, it blossomed into an online revolution. Mr Clegg himself has said that the satirical #nickcleggsfault craze that swept through Twitter last week mocking the papers was one of his favourite moments of the campaign so far. And there's a strong anti-mainstream-media slant among the 150,000 members of the Facebook group called We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!, with fan posters declaring "Rage Against The Media".

Make no mistake - the politicians would rather have the mainstream press on their side than against them. But this time around, both they and the voters are finding ways of hitting back.