If the Mainstream did its job maybe....

Paul Moulton of MTTV has an item here with Julie Edge MHK going on about the perils and pitfalls not the mention the nastiness of social media. Leaving aside Julie’s experience, which she obviously feels strongly about, lets not forget that it's in the interest of the main stream media to paint social media in a bad light:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUPG9uP9gF8&feature=youtu.be

Let face it social media is often doing the job that the mainstream media (MSM) fails to do. MSM reports trivia or sensationalises issues but can conveniently looks the other way when its chums in the establishment may be impacted. I highlighted this only yesterday pointing out a woman who stole a few sticks of firewood had her name splashed all over the paper and yet serial tax and NI avoiders enjoyed anonymity.

Speaking of anonymity I don't like it and I certainly have no ‘fake logins’ on Facebook or other sites. I think if you need to say something say it openly and in my case I can be pretty acerbic. I post on Transceltic now and share across to CL Mannin site. However when I ran CL Mannin proper I only really had one complaint that was serious and that was not about our post it was the comments underneath and they were promptly removed. More recently I pulled a complete shared post because a slagging match had developed between two parties in the comments section.

I don’t doubt that people can say horrible and hurtful things. As a Union official long before the advent of social media I and my family were subject to abuse. Even recently when I wrote for the newspaper my parents, dead now for many years, were abused.

Back in my first days in the Union a lot of the ire channeled my way came from politicians and I therefore have a low tolerance threshold for their complaints.

I personally think that social media plays a good role and until the man stream start doing a better job of work and not simply recycling government press releases let's hope we continue to have a vibrant social media. That shouldn’t mean that on occasion if you cross a line you should not be man (or woman) enough to admit it and apologise - I would not and never had had any reluctance to do that.

However if I upset or annoy Howard. Alf, Chris Thomas, the Chamber et al I’m sorry but as long as the policies you pursue upset me ‘I ain’t going to stop’.

As for MTTV, Manx Radio, the cupboards or news, the BBC and IOM Today ‘up your game’ and maybe folk will not seek what they see as a more accurate portrayal of Island life on the web! Sometimes there could be a price to pay for that as was demonstrated when Tynwald disgracefully turned away a IOM Newspapers journalist from an important sitting not long ago - the whole of the MSM should have been up in arms about that but were they NO.

Bernard Moffatt