To battle the ever-rising tide of spin from the media and government, something dramatic would be needed. Breaking that cycle of abuse - where one side spins because the other is busy spinning - takes an external force, a mediator. Those wacky folks over at MySociety think that they've got just the solution.
Normally, (and I use this word in only the loosest of contexts), Downing Street's spokespeople hold a twice-daily press conference in The Foreign Press Association, or occasionally 10 Downing Street itself. A select group of crack journalists go in, fire off a few questions that they've got interests in, get official responses from a civil servant (the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman, which is more of a post than a person, and is currently filled by two people), and run off to write something interesting.
Therein lies the rub. Because what they heard is, one will likely almost feel guaranteed to believe in this day and age, is a viewpoint with a bit of bias; i.e., spin. What those journalists then do is add a bit more, and tilt the spin in whatever direction their article is currently demanding. One might even argue that because most of these people have a fundamental interest in either maintaining viewership or readership, i.e., MONEY, that they have a vested interest in applying spin to the source material.
What this project represents is an opportunity to get at the pre-spun sources of the journalists themselves, and take place in a discourse about the actual words by Downing Street.
Called Downing Street Says, the project aims to:
This website aims to short-circuit this game of political Chinese whispers. Every day we will publish what the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman actually said in response to the lobby's questioning, rather than what he was reported as saying.
[...]
We give the PM an unmediated platform. In return, you get to have your say.
The perfect social software platform: A channel of direct publishing by government; the channel can be interacted with directly by the public, but any attempt to slant that medium is also an attempt to slant the content provided to the journalists. Between the two groups, each will hold the other at bay as 'watchdogs', ensuring that neither side gets fed anything too incredibly slanted one way or the other without getting called out. Increased participation at the source reduces the possibility of either side to put too much spin on the ball, ensuring a more honest representation.
And best yet, you get an opportunity to do something that so few people rarely do: through the magic of well-written prose, you can write something in a forum where there's actually a good chance that someone in Downing Street might notice; at very worst, your concerns are forever connected to his words, and at best, your voice is heard and your concerns reflected in policy.
You could do this today, of course, through the magic that is a 1st-class-stamp-on-a-letter, but the problem is that people just don't do it. Hell, I've had this book of six stamps now for nigh on three months, and I still have four left. Breaking down the barriers that prevent members of society from being in closer contact with the day-to-day workings of their government is a tough nut to crack, but the folks at MySociety.org have brought some of the possibilities that a digital age offers us to more directly inform ourselves about and apply influence to our governments to life.
Spend a little less time reading the Guardian's analysis of the meaning of those words, goes one side of the argument, and a little more time spent what Downing Street is actually saying, and you'll understand what this government is really up to, as opposed to what those liberal-minded morons chasing green dreams and perfectly impossible futures wants you to believe it's doing. On the other side of that argument, read a little less of the Daily Mail's interpretation of the day's events, and a little more of what Downing Street actually says, and you might just see that the Daily Mail is getting filthy rich off of playing your heartstrings like a busker in a tube station, and cares about your money, not you.
And this happens without ever de-valuing the importance of the media. The Prime Minister's words alone are not enough sides to the story to understand the whole of what's really happening, and journalists make their living out of coming up with new angles on stories and compiling a wide range of facts from a wide range of sources into a single, whole picture of what's actually taking place. Here, however, is the everyman's opportunity to begin to use the net we've all become accustomed to using to do some of that homework for him/herself, and become less reliant on these media organisations to pre-digest and form their opinions for them.
The reality is, We, The People are a smarter audience than we've ever been before. (At least, we are in this country.) It's not that we don't need pre-digestion; it's not that any of us wants to spend all of our time researching every topic of interests ourselves. But we're born and raised neck deep in information in this era, and we've all become a lot better at navigating it than our forefathers. We're no longer uncomfortable with the idea that facts in the real world are pretty fuzzy and subject to a lot of interpretation, and many of us get our information from a broad enough range of sources to spot the spin all on our own, without needing one of the big media outlets to, in helping to point it out, add a whole lot more spin on top. Not that news should be "Just the facts, ma'am", but we're not looking for the same kind of fast-food meal that media franchises are wont to provide these days.
And so, a toast: To their first unofficial project, and to their future official ones, may they dominate the universe as we know it. Or something.
