To seek reaction, or not seek reaction, that is the question

Seen as every blogger in the blogosphere has had their say on Iain Dale's spat with several lobby journalists (in the unlikely event you haven't seen it, the original post is here and the latest follow-up is here), VFTN may have well have his say.

There are a number of points to be made:

VFTN is a huge fan of Dale's but it is not right for him to say he writes opinionated comment and has no pretensions towards journalism. When you mark a post exclusive, as he did with the first post on the alleged spin operation on Gordon Brown's anti-terror proposals, and go on to talk about unearthing facts then that is certainly journalism. There is nothing wrong with mixing news and comment, plenty of newspapers do so either explicitly or with their choice of stories and the angle they take with them. Call it journalism, call it opinionated comment, but the original post on the Brown spin operation was presented as fact and put serious question marks against the Sunday lobby.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the Sunday lobby have fought back and with a reasonable unified voice insisted he is wrong. It is therefore up to Dale to prove his point. He does not have to reveal his source but he should be able to provide some kind of evidence that what he is saying is true and the Sunday lobby are covering up. Dale, after all, is not averse to pointing out the poorly sourced journalism of others. Witness his attack on a now infamous article by Melissa Kite.
Having said all that, Dale is right to point out that, whatever conditions were placed on the briefing, if one or two of the lobby had bothered to ring the Tories they would have discovered that Brown had put his foot in it and damaged genuine efforts on all sides to reach a consensus on security.
VFTN has some sympathy with the view expressed by Fraser Nelson that it is unwise for hacks, particularly the Sunday variety, to risk losing stories for the sake of reaction but the lobby must have realised that none of them had it exclusively and, in their shoes, VFTN might have sought reaction in the hope it would move the story on should it appear on telly on the Saturday night.
The conclusion: no-one comes out of this episode looking good. If Brown's machine did put a no-reaction clause on a briefing then they should stop spinning that Brown will mark an end to spin. Bloggers have free reign to comment on what they like but if they want to take responsibility for unearthing facts and publishing them they must be prepared to defend the stories with evidence of truth or they are no better than the mainstream hacks they frequently, and often justifiably, criticise. The lobby also ends up looking stupid for either missing a story by failing to make one call or accepting a briefing with conditions attached.
Finally, rather than complaining about using Sunday papers to float policies the Tories would do well to get better at doing it themselves. Perhaps Mr Coulson will help.