Pikaian journalists.

Pikaian: very small brained (noun, 2007, a lunartalks original). Pikaia gracilens is the earliest known fossil chordate, dating from the Cambrian explosion around 565 million years ago. Around 4 cm long it had a rudimentary spine and a small anterior nerve swelling which would evolve to become the vertebrate brain. Pikaia was an ancestor of modern vertebrates, but its vestigial mental capacity and bottom feeding lifestyle has remained unchanged in modern political journalists.

Following Ming Campbell’s speech to the Lib Dem conference today, the Lib Dem blogs have been overwhelmingly critical of the media coverage: the BBC has been a particular disappointment. Their headline coverage of his speech was ‘I’m not too old’, headline-mining one part of a comprehensive philosophical and policy-filled speech that set out in the clearest possible terms what it means to be a liberal in C21st Britain. The speech is available in full without BBC ‘analysis’ here. Perhaps the worst bit of nakedly partial, lazy hackery was by Nick Assinder who did his best to make and sustain stories about a leadership challenge where none existed here and in an oh-so smartass piece headlined Ming’s leadership bid. David Nikel deals with him (see below) with such coldly irate verve there’s nothing more to add.

David Nikel goes for the BBC’s pikaian in chief Assinder here.
Paul Walter laments the low-wattage conference coverage here.
Stephen Tall comments on lowbrow times at The Times here.
I lost my temper and The Guardian lost a lifelong reader over this bit of vapid hackery in particular.

I really can’t be arsed with newspapers any more, and BBC News politics coverage has absolutely plummeted in my estimation, too. It really does need to reign back on the two-ways, on the journalists talking to journalists about what other journalists have said, on following the media pack and on the need to fill time with speculation and otiose comment.