Rhys Morgan's video blog on Bleachgate
Journalists wanting evidence of the value of blogs should take a look at the ‘Bleachgate’ story which has taken a month to filter up from 15-year-old Rhys Morgan’s blog post through other skeptic and science bloggers into The Guardian.
Rhys has Crohn’s Disease and was sceptical of the Miracle Mineral Solutions ‘treatment’ being plugged on a support forum that was also described by the FDA as industrial bleach. The forum didn’t like his scepticism, and banned him. He blogged about his concerns, and it went from there.
I can only hope that enough people link to The Guardian’s piece with the words Miracle Mineral Solutions to help raise awareness of the concerns. *Cough*.
AFTERTHOUGHT: What deserves particular attention is how the Guardian reporter Martin Robbins is responding to critical comments – providing further details of how the forum dealt with his approaches, and addressing conspiracy theorists. This is journalism that gets out there and engages with the issue rather than simply broadcasting. Wonderful.
Martin Robbins' replies to comment
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Though it is now on the Guardian site, which as you say is important, it’s not really MSM coverage in some respects. Sort of, depends on definition. Martin is not a reporter as such, more a skeptical blogger – recently brought into the Guardian through their science blogging network (though also Martin is arguably changing his career slightly via that move).
I’d love to see the issues covered from a mainstream perspective – to get more readers but also think about the issue in broader ways too. Took your lead though I finally got around to blogging about it too.
Yes – it is the less mainstream part of MSM & it was difficult to find a phrase to describe Martin – reporter-blogger?
Thanks to Alice for reminding me of your clever idea Paul – I have blogged about it too. There’s no new information in the post but plenty of links 🙂
(bwahahahaha)
Regarding my status at the Guardian, this wasn’t a blog post, it was a column – I’ve been a columnist and freelance journalist for The Guardian a lot longer than I’ve been a column. But in general I find the whole blogger vs. journalist vs. MSM categorization obsession really annoying – it’s possible now for a blog to be mainstream media, and it’s possible for a blogger to be a journalist.
Sorry Martin, didn’t mean my comment to imply you weren’t a journalist. I’m sorry you read blogger v journ into that comment – really wasn’t the intention (also didn’t realise that was a “column” piece hard to spot distinction online). I thought it was worth celebrating the blogging network, but turns out that it can’t take credit.
Still, we could more plainly say that Martin writes for the Guardian via his work as a skeptic blogger and the Guardian’s willingness/ keenness to bring in such voices. So, to make my point differently, it’s great that Martin’s used his column in this way, and I hope the story gets as much coverage as possibly, but I also hope that it is covered from other angles, because though arguably the most important part of the story is the anti-quack element, I personally think it can say more than that, to further audiences.
p.s. look more coverage at PloS blogs – I think off the back of Jo’s post. As well as coverage in the Kenyan media
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