Via Tim in the comments, I find myself strangely drawn to an article from The Register from late December…

Comment The internet has always offered a stage for dramatic reinvention. Corporate lobbyists have found it a suitable theatre for AstroTurfing, given the willingness of a net audience to suspend its disbelief. Now, internet television lets professional politicians play the role of citizen-reporter.

18DoughtyStreet Talk TV launched in October as Britain’s first political internet TV channel. It describes itself as “an anti-establishment TV station on the internet” with “citizen journalist reporters” who will be “championing rebel opinions” and “constantly questioning authority”. But its five directors are all former Conservative candidates or employees and it advertised for staff in America with the claim that it would be “Like Fox News”.

And there’s more…

Fortunate too for Donal Blaney, a graduate of Virginia’s Leadership Institute. (Its mission: “to identify, recruit, train and place conservatives in politics, government and media”. Its alumni: Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and a former Director of the Christian Coalition). He has appeared across 18DoughtyStreet’s schedules and became a Director of the station after serving as a Conservative councillor and starting the Young Britons’ Foundation to implement, “lessons learnt from a collection of American thinktanks, most notably The Young America’s Foundation, The Leadership Institute, The Heritage Foundation, Accuracy in Academia and the American Conservative Union”.

18DoughtyStreet was recruiting from a right-wing American think-tank back in September (a strategy previously favoured by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad). It was an advert for interns on the website of the Institute for Humane Studies (“assists.. students.. with an interest in individual liberty”) that claimed that 18DoughtyStreet, “will challenge the liberal bias of the mainstream broadcast media, most notably the BBC.” And, as well as emulating Fox News, that, “it will provide a voice for the silent majority.”

Does someone want to tell me again, why any Labour blogger would want to associate themselves with this lot?