Guido Fawkes blasts Lobby journalists

Blogger Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) is riding high following his Downing Street "smear emails" scoop which led to the resignation of Damian McBride and today rounds on Lobby journalists.
He says: "Cowardice and cronyism runs right through the Lobby. Fear of being taken off the teat of pre-packaged stories served to them. That is not journalism, that is copy-taking. The many stories filed this week which reveal just how horrible Brown’s cabal have been are of mere historical interest. They would have been brave if they had been written before McPoison was toppled."
Guido does praise three political journalists - Peter Oborne, Fraser Nelson and Martin Bright - for their independence and standing up to Downing Street.

Watch Guido go

Blogger Guido Fawkes (aka Paul Staines) is setting the political agenda this weekend with his story of Damian McBride and the 10 Downing Street 'smear' emails. It seems they have found their way to a Sunday newspaper, although Guido today denies having sold them.
He says: "Downing Street under Gordon Brown has been particularly vicious in smearing opponents. . . Guido has hard evidence that Tory MPs have been smeared, and that a particularly vicious concerted smear operation was mounted against George Osborne. . .Some well known lobby journalists have knowingly gone along with it."
Then in a mention of his rivalry with Derek Draper, Guido adds: "This is a lot bigger than some minor bloggers spat."
This story could dominate the weekend and the Sunday papers.
Update 6pm: McBride's gone
Guido's comment: "maybe he can start a blog"
Update 11.55pm: News of the World says it will publish emails.
Sunday Times reveals contents of emails

Government move to tighten up libel laws in bid to counter political bloggers

The Government is to publish a green paper on the reform of the libel laws which will be seen in some quarters as an attempt to gag bloggers such as The Mole, Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale who have been getting under the skin of ministers, according to The Mole on The First Post online news magazine.
But can the Government control the bloggers? Guido Fawkes announced just before Christmas that he was planning to leave Google Blogger so that his blog could evade the British legal system, Governmenrt pressure and privacy laws.
The government does have one card to play. The Mole does predict that some political bloggers are likely to win their fight to be given access to The Lobby.

Guido Fawkes off from Google Blogger in move to beat British judges and privacy laws

Political blogger Guido Fawkes is leaving Google's Blogger platform, partly in a move to beat the British legal system and counter privacy laws.
Guido posted today that he wanted to increase the interactivity opportunities for his "co-conspirators" and that: "This necessitates a shift to a less vulnerable more "distributed" platform, which for legal and practical reasons has to be on infrastructure not owned by enterprises that crumble at the first hint of a writ.
"Google have until now been very resilient but at the end of the day they are not going to risk their corporate neck for Guido or his co-conspirators. Google UK likes to please governments that presents a risk to Guido that he can no longer take.
"As privacy laws become ever more draconian and the government and the EU start thinking about how to suppress blogs, it seems to Guido wise to pre-emptively protect himself from legal threats to freedom of speech.
"The UK press is nowadays one of the most injuncted, litigated and censored in the West. British ISPs quite understandably don't want to risk their profits for a principle. The most straight forward way for Guido to frustrate lawyers is to make sure no element of the infrastructure of the site is within the domain of a British judge."
Guido has reported that he was recently, along with other parts of the British media, served with an injunction over emails allegedly stolen from a politician.

For Fawkes sake: moderating politico blogs

Guido Fawkes reveals today that he is going to take action to try to moderate comments on his blog. Guido Fawkes, like many political blogs, attracts foul mouthed abuse and allegations aimed at politicians which if published in a newspaper would lead straight to the libel courts.
Guido says he will not be bringing in pre-moderation or registration but says: "Things will be changing in the New Year, you will still be able to say what you like (within somewhat arbitrary inconsistent limits) without pre-moderation or registering. However there will be incentives for those who produce better quality commentary based on a new element of co-conspirator community rating.
"Good comments will be more prominently displayed, disliked comments will be less prominent. The biggest innovation is that it will be possible for readers to set their own tolerance thresholds. Poorly rated comments will be invisible to those who set their preferences accordingly.
"If you only want to see comments judged by co-conspirators to be witty, amusing or illuminating, set your threshold to "Recommended". Don't want to read foul language? Set your threshold to "U". Want to see all and any comments no matter how foul? Set your threshold to "XXX".
"If your commentary is consistently recommended your comments will automatically be more prominent in the future and may even get highlighted on the frontpage. Will it work? That is up to you."
Guido adds: "Iain Dale has had enough of window-lickers in his comments and introduced registration, he told Guido he realised he had to when he himself was no longer interested in reading the blog comments."
He also notes that pre-moderation of comments on national newspaper websites can cost a six-figure sum a year.

Guido's guide to guarding sources

Blogger Guido Fawkes is encouraging whistleblowers to come forward by offering them the following protection:
"If you call the voicemail number your speech is converted to text and SMS'd to Guido's mobile phone. Your voice is then erased. If you fax a document to Guido it is converted into an image file and emailed to Guido, if it is going to be used all identifiers are digitally removed, often by converting the fax image to clean text using optical character recognition software. If you want to send an untraceable encrypted email, Guido recommends using Hushmail."
This might be useful advice for any journalists working within the Thames Valley Police area (see post below).