Someone once told me that blogging was just ‘vanity publishing’. By this I assumed they meant that it was a method of self promotion, of vainly putting your comments out there so people would read it whether they wanted it or not.

The way I was told seemed to imply that it was a worthless pursuit and only the ‘vain’ would be doing it. As it was a ‘traditional’ publisher telling me this, I got the impression that they were a little put out that anyone could say anything and have an audience with the world.

This is the beauty of the web. It is actually a leveller of playing fields and it means anyone can say anything and have it read by anyone. It democratises, frees and gives the minority a voice on the grand stage – and the establishment hates it.

News outlets no longer have a way of holding on to their news as their own – it becomes the people’s and if they say something that isn’t true, they no longer get away with it. In fact, rather than spreading information to the many, they are simply pandering a political line to those who still hold a narrow view.

For example, it’s a well known fact that many of the newspapers in Britain follow a party line based on a particular view that they would like to promote to their readers. However because they have this view, they are only ever read by those who share the same view – they’re essentially preaching to the converted.

When they say something, their readers will believe it, unless they can read something more compelling elsewhere. But they probably won’t bother to look because they are happy with what they are being told.

In fact, the democratic nature of the web is actually creating more divisions in some cases because in order to not see the truth you actively have to ignore it. There is no excuse now to not understand, to seek out and to learn the truth. Information is out there, you simply have to do a search and you can find it.

Blogging has set information free and you no longer have to believe opinion piece, you can research and make up your mind based on facts, not what someone has told you and the best way to do that is to search for and read blogs that have no political leaning. How you find such blogs is another matter and of course, our up-bringing and what we read growing up will obviously have some bearing on that, but eventually, the old media will cease to exist and we will be free to ignore what we are being told in preference to learn for ourselves