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Finally, the BBC has started to give bloggers some credit, in a roundabout way, as this afternoons prime ministerial aide shenanigans indicates. One particular highlight of today was watching the BBC News Channel where ‘Guido Fawkes’ more than held his own while the BBC news presenter repeatedly made ridiculous statements such as:

Yes but, you bloggers always make unsubstantiated claims (sic)

To which the quite sensible repsonse was, “oh really, show me something I have said which is unsubstantiated! (sic)” and then went on to argue that this statement was, in itself, quite unsubstantiated.

It was good to see the old fashioned BBC newsman being schooled by a ‘blogger’ who he quite clearly regarded as having a place in the journalistic food-chain akin to that of an amoeba.

Unfortunately for the BBC – the anti-china, out of touch, patronising, cash-haemorrhaging BBC (unsubstantiated?!) – it is they who is in serious danger of ostracising their entire audience by constantly berating ‘the blogosphere’, which makes up a substantial proportion of their audience, indeed, the BBC are rampant bloggers themselves.

Luckily, however, BBC News got things back on track by producing a pointless story about how celebrities are now using Twitter, which touched base with New Media, so happily we can be assured they are up with the times once more.

But, it was good to see that other news franchises are upset this week by the growth of free content on the internet as they lashed out quite ludicrously at the great hand that feeds, by criticising Google for stealing their content. Without Google, these same organizations would do well to realise, their readership would be dramatically lower: their ad revenue equally so. The point of free content is to develop your ‘brand’ as a producer of quality, up-to-the-minute news: if you cannot do so profitably, get out of the market altogether, don’t simply moan about how you hanker for the good old days when businesses were falling over themselves to take out full-page ads in your million selling newspapers. Those days are gone, and will never return. Print is dead. TV is next. Smarten up.

The future, is right here. Where you’re looking now.