What’s the difference between the News of the World and mechanically-recovered chicken?

Or, Does the end justify the means?

I’m always on the look out for a good analogy. This one popped into my head.

Once upon a time, the people who run meat processing plants became frustrated that little bits of otherwise delicious (and saleable) meat clung doggedly to a carcass after it had been stripped to make chicken nuggets, beefburgers or satay sticks. So, they invented ever more elaborate means by which to remove the meats from the bones. ‘Advanced meat recovery’ involves shaving, pressing or scraping the meat from the bones. Even more stomach-churning is ‘mechanically-recovered meat’: forcing bones through a sieve under high pressure (and in the process turning it into a kind of meat/bone mush that sounds truly delightful). And we eat this stuff, depending on where we live and how much money we have to spend on food, because it’s cheap and fast and, erm, tasty…

Where’s the analogy? Well, our modern media could be said to operate in a similar way. Once the choice cuts of easily-accessible news are filleted, served up and consumed, where do they look to produce the next course? The processes they can use range from the distasteful – blagging, kiss-and-tells, honey traps – to the downright illegal – bugging, hacking, bribes – all to find the next story. It’s still news – kinda. But in the process of obtaining it, it’s been distorted, mashed and sullied in a way that makes it unappetising, even while we’re chucking it down our throats.

The counter-argument – put forward, amongst others by today’s Sunday Times – is that in journalism the end justifies the means. That this process uncovers truths that would otherwise be hidden, and brings wrongdoers to account. But I can’t help thinking that this is a convenient excuse. Their priority is not justice – there are the police and the law courts for that – but profit. And the profit motive can too easily leave ethics out of the picture, too quickly let practices drift from casually expeditious to dodgy to immoral to criminal.

So, if we’re all starting to wonder whether modern food manufacture hasn’t destroyed something pure and simple by industrialisation…. then will we turn the same lens onto the media and wonder whether we will thrive if we continue to consume a diet of scandal, sleaze and expose? Can the media be – well – organic, I suppose?

What comes first, the blog or the post?

Sounds about right to start with a question. We’re all asking questions, aren’t we? Everything we say has, somewhere hidden in it, even the most emphatic of statements, even the clearest of utterances, along with those kinds of sentences that go on and on and never feel like they are going to end, one clause after another because we don’t quite want to stop, don’t quite want to let someone else get a word in, erm…. where was I? Oh, yes. Everything has a question hidden it.

So, do we start with the format (the blog) or with the utterance (the post)? There’s no blog without a post. But there’s no message without a medium.

These days it seems to be all about the medium. Google+ launches, and is full, almost immediately, with people discussing… Google+. Not the crisis in East Africa. Or Greek riots (question: What’s a Grecian Urn? Answer: he doesn’t, due to the austerity budget). Even the News of The World hacking scandal is all about the medium and the means of obtaining information, about the murky machinations of the media itself.

So – a blog dedicated, not to itself, to me, or even to you. (You’re great, don’t get me wrong, it’s just I don’t know you that well). Not focused on social media, new media or even old media. A blog dedicated to questions and answers, of all shapes, sizes and genres, and the discussion that ensues.

This week, the editorial aim of The Economist was drawn to my attention: “to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress.” Kinda nineteenth century, but I like it. Let’s see if we can get anywhere near that.