Just a day after Tony Blair ripped into the "feral" media driven by impact, US political blog supremo Joe Trippi has said politicians need to realise that political spin could be over, thanks to the web.
This, from Tania Branigan in the Guardian:
"It may take a disaster: a leader saying something ridiculous in an unregulated moment, thinking no press are there, and then realising a person in the UK with a video cellphone could destroy you, [with the clip] getting passed through social networks.
"Before TV, what mattered was how your voice sounded. Then with TV it matters what your candidate looks like ... Anybody can fake it on TV: all the Joe Trippis and Alastair Campbells get really good at making sure our guy looks great for the eight seconds that are actually going on the news.
"We are now moving to a medium where authenticity is king, from what things look like to what's real ... You have to be 'on' 24 hours a day, seven days a week."
Joe, who worked on the failed Democratic campaign by US politician Howard Dean (who was, in part, slain by his "scream" ) and is now attached to the John Edwards campaign, thinks that there are enough watchmen out there that we will force politicos to be better.
I wonder whether politicians can take hold of this properly, or whether it will simply exist outside politics, as a check-and-balance regime for the natural excesses of the powerful. I'm still waiting to see what the impact of David Cameron's videoblog or Alan Johnson's Twitter account will seriously change the way we feel about them (and, more crucially, the way they feel about us).
Trippi's vision is intoxicating but though I count myself among the digital optimists of the world, but I'm not sure I can see the revolution happening yet. Am I alone?
