The Prime Minister has given an interesting speech today making the point that the relationship between today's (national) media and politicians is damaged and is of need of repair. Mr Blair said relations had always been fraught, but now threatened politicians' "capacity to take the right decisions for the country". He said people in public life, from politics to business, sport, the military and charities, found that "a vast aspect" of their job now was coping with the media, "its sheer scale, weight and constant hyperactivity. At points it literally overwhelms".
It is certainly possible to argue what has caused this. In my opinion the focus of Labour, and especially Alastair Campbell, on satisfying the media's needs for activity and proposals above that of good Government has contributed to this result. But to be fair it is also true that following the development firstly of rolling news channels and then more recently of the internet the rules of the game changed substantially. Stories are now broken in real time (by both mainstream news outlets and increasingly by 'amateur' bloggers) and so maintream media have reacted to changing market place.
And on this I agree with the PM - for the sake of a healthy democracy and proper debate, there is a need for more focus on reporting the facts (and the detail), not just on commenatary. Hopefully the recent changes to how the internet is used will actually help matters, with blogs filling the gaps that mainstream press, radio and television neglect.
