Sweeney Agonistes
BBC reporter John Sweeney prods Scientology member Tommy Davis about being part of a sinister brainwashed cult. Davis tires of Sweeney's approach and refuses to play along, whereupon Sweeney loses it. Not very flattering for the Beeb, of course, as Sweeney comes across looking and acting like a yob. In his defence, no doubt, he can adduce the unpleasantness of being filmed by the Scientologists while he was filming them.
And this kind of thing is spreading. The sound you're hearing is that of tables being turned. When Wired magazine reporter Fred Vogelstein asked two people for phone interviews each laid down Web 2.0 conditions. Internet pioneer Dave Winer said he'd answer questions in public, on his blog, and new media entrepreneur Jason Calacanis insisted on doing the interview via e-mail so he could publish a full record of it online. Writing in the Guardian on Monday, Jeff Jarvis posed this question: "Who says reporters should set the conditions when they are the ones seeking information and when the interviewee no longer needs the press to reach the public?" The rules of the game are changing.
Factoids: John Milton's 1671 verse tragedy Samson Agonistes recounts the end of Samson's life, when he is a blind captive of the Philistines ("Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves"). The most famous post-Miltonic use of "Agonistes" is by T.S. Eliot, who titled one of his dramas Sweeney Agonistes, where Sweeney represents the materialistic and shallow modern man.
