I feel torn on this one

[andrewducker]

Reading this story I feel conflicting things.

On the one hand, I completely believe in freedom of speech and information. On the other hand, I know that if every time I had a disagreement with one of my coworkers about how to best carry out some piece of work it was made public, it would make my job about 50 times harder.

And, certainly, every time someone in government says "I have a bright idea!", only to have someone else point out that there's a flaw in it, it's in some newspaper being touted as "MINISTERS FIGHT AMONGST THEMSELVES - GOVERNMENT ABOUT TO FALL!", which just makes me want to go on a rampage through the newspaper district.

Comments

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

Many things make me want to take a machine gun to Fleet Street.

The media attitude towards politicians is far from healthy. It is totally unrealistic to expect every government project to work. I would rather have a government that tries something, reviews it, says "OK we thought it was a good idea, but it didn't work. Let's try something else", than the current situation in which no politician will ever publicly admit something didn't work.

Same if a government adopts an idea put forward by another party. To my mind this isn't an action worthy of media-crucifiction if it's a good idea. That's what I want my government to do.

But alas sound-bites and slanging matches from PMQ's are worthy of far more media coverage than a report into the months of scrutiny and revisions and average white paper is subjected to as it passes through parliament.

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

In general I'm with you, and in this situation it's particularly bad since there's an actual real important public policy debate at the heart of it, which is entirely lost in the "Fight! Fight!" coverage.