Avancé / C1
Compréhension orale
Fiche de réponses
12
The Popularity of weblogging
1. Listen first for the important information. Don’t panic if you cannot understand every word.
Information needed
Information found
Easy to do
No need for real technical skills
Ian’s views on why blogging has become so
Can run a blog for free
popular
Need for news that isn’t
newspapers / media
in
normal
The interviewer’s views on why blogging is so
People love to moan and whine / complain
popular
The probable result
defamatory in a blog
of
putting
something Mechanisms are in place so people can be
sacked / fired / sued / …
There is no checking / verifying of the news
The concerns expressed about news stories in
that is posted in a blog, whereas there is
blogs
control in the media.
2. Vocabulary work : There is a lot of special vocabulary to do with blogging in this document,
as well as some less well-known words. Probably, the words you are looking for are those
you don’t understand, so try to pick them out from the text. Try to do this without the
script to see if you can understand what their spelling is, and then check by using the script.
Find :
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
an expression meaning ‘I really do not agree at all’ = I couldn’t disagree more
an expression meaning ‘to maintain a blog’ = to run a blog
a word meaning ‘the established, recgonised media’ = the mainstream
an expression meaning ‘intellectual’ = high-brow
another synonym for ‘complain’ – it’s homonym of something nice to drink = whine
2 synonyms for ‘idiotic’ = stupid and foolish
an expression which means ‘to have their own reasons for doing something’ = to have an
axe to grind
©Maison des Langues, Université de Poitiers, 1997-2006
Avancé / C1
Compréhension orale
Script
12
The Popularity of weblogging
OK. Well, we’ll talk about the legal side of this in a second. Nick Lockett is here with DL Legal and
also Ian S. Bruce, writer on technology. Good morning to you both – I mean Ian, first of all, is Paul
right to express reservations?
Well, I understand the basis from which his reservations come but I have to say from the point of
unfiltered, unfettered publishing, I think it’s wonderful and I couldn’t disagree more on that front.
I mean, you can’t just take the people writing about their work in isolation – you’ve got to look at
the whole blog thing and the reason that came through was not simply because it was easy to do,
which it is a very easy thing to do, you don’t need many technical skills and there are a lot of sites
that allow you to run one for free so that’s fantastic, but that isn’t the full reason it became so
popular. The reason it became so popular is because people obviously found something lacking in
the news agenda put out by the mainstream – and given that, you know, that most people in
America got their Gulf War coverage off Fox, you can hardly be surprised by that. They are moving
in and supplying the news and the access to news that they believe is needed.
Well I can understand that up to a point, but aren’t you making this slightly more high-brow than it
is? I mean, some blogs – and there was one printed in the newspaper the other week by someone
who worked in a supermarket – are really just about people complaining about their work. It’s
something that we love to do in Britain anyway, as, you know, as a nation and this is an outlet for
people just to moan and whine.
Well fine, but people moan and whine all the time and to be honest if you’re not going to do it to
me whilst I’m trying to have a quiet drink and you do it on the web instead, that’s fine. If you are
stupid and foolish enough to print something that runs you into trouble, then we have the
mechanisms in place already to deal with that. You can be fired, you can be sued….
The press have mechanisms in place and that’s why people, to a large extent, believe what they
read in the papers, because…..
Do they? Well I’m not so sure….
You’re a journalist….
Yes indeed and I think it is probably a failing on our part to…, that people are turning to the
alternatives for news, they plainly think that there is a problem with the news as it is presented
by professional journalists and thus they are …. the market never lies.
If there is then, the papers would go out of business. There are definite checks and balances as far
as journalists are concerned but not in blogs. Anyone can publish anything they like, that is
dangerous, because people have got axes to grind and if they are doing it …
Whereas Rupert Murdoch never does that with The Sun….
©Maison des Langues, Université de Poitiers, 1997-2006