Portraying themselves as the guardians of democracy, what is beginning to emerge is the lengths to which the media are prepared to go – up to and including illegal acts, such as corruption – not to discover information in the public interest, but to acquire low-grade tittle-tattle, gossip and private details about pols 'n' slebs.
Compare and contrast the extraordinary resource devoted to gathering and processing their low-grade tat, with the resources allocated to stories such as this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this - all stories we've broken on EURef and our other blogs.
The further point, of course – which we have made before – is that crap sells. If the media didn't make any money out of it, they would stop doing it.
But the one favour they could do us all is for them to get off their high horses and stop pretending they are doing this for any other reason than to make money and pursue their own personal agendas. These people are so far from real journalism and the public interest that most of them wouldn't recognise serious stories if they leapt up and bit them.
If they achieved a fraction of what we blogs achieved, with the resources we have at our disposal, it would be a miracle. And given what we have achieved, I think we have every right to look down our noses at these ghastly creatures. While we have been looking after the real news, they have been pratting around with the tat - never missing an opportunity to lower their own standards.
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