Thanks to Cursor.org for bringing left i on the news to my attention, a media monitoring blog whose posts include highlighting

“an AFP story reporting that U.S. troops in Fallujah “had orders to shoot all males of fighting age seen on the streets, armed or unarmed,” a reader comments on “the fact that fighting-age males were prohibited from evacuating the city in the first place.””

(Cursor.org 12/21/04 18:14)

This got me thinking about why the American blogosphere seems so much more politicised than in Europe – and I think it’s this: traditionally European news media has always followed a politicised model, whereas the American model has an objective model tradition (at least according to McQuail et al, 1998: 252): does this mean there therefore seems to be more of a ‘need’ for politicised writing in America which is not satisfied by the traditional news media?