Flight International

A special kind of scrutiny was applied to the European Aviation Safety Agency last week.

On 27 September the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) imported five of the top executives from EASA, seated them behind a long desk facing a packed hall of industry people, allowed them a few words each to update the audience on current issues they face, and then opened the session for about two hours of questions.

This doesn't normally happen to the senior executives in European agencies. So why EASA? And why did the agency's big five - executive director Patrick Goudou, communications head Daniel Holtgen, quality and standardisation director Francesco Banal, certification director Norbert Lohl and deputy head of flight standards Eric Sivel - agree to undergo this public grilling?

I was watching a documentary on UK television the other week about the impact that bloggers had on the race to become the US Democrat party's candidate for the Connecticut Senate election last year. Out of nowhere anti-Iraq war businessman Ned Lamont defeated sitting senator Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination last August but Lieberman, running as an independent, won the actual Connecticut senate election.

The documentary made the case that anti-Iraq war, anti-Lieberman bloggers had generated support for Lamont and the programme's production team followed the bloggers around giving an insight into how they work, what technology they use, who the individuals were. During the documentary one blogger made the comment that now he had got involved in covering the senate candidate race he didn't think what the media did was so tough and anyone could do it.

I am the first to admit that listening to what people say, asking them questions and then writing it up in a clear and concise form is not rocket science but the bloggers big mistake was to think that writing anything and publishing it on the internet makes you a journalist. By writing anything I mean only writing about one issue and approaching the subject with preconcpetions about what reality should be presented. For example these Connecticut Democrat party candidate race bloggers always wrote supportive reports about Lamont and always attacked Lieberman.