Sarkozy's 'cyber spin doctor' sparks wrath on the web

The French blogosphere is abuzz with outrage and derision over a 24-year-old appointed by Nicolas Sarkozy to keep an eye on what is being said about the president on the World Wide Web.

"Sarkozy's little cop," "Sarkozy's eye on the net," and "KGB Web" are some of the comments and videos posted since Nicolas Princen on Monday joined the president's communications team as an Internet advisor at the Elysee palace.

He is "in charge of monitoring what is circulating on the Web about the president of the republic: blogs, news sites, videos ... just as one might do for a traditional press review," explained an advisor at the Elysee.

src news.yahoo.com...;_ylt=AjlfyPCwH234fjM2SB08WnkjtBAF

Its amusing how politicians don't like the public eye and scrutiny parading their every move. Almost ironic in some cases given the amount of CCTV floating about these days. I like the notion that people like Sarkozy have their dirty laundry out for all to see. I applaud bloggers everywhere for almost becoming the new political papparazi. In reality though what can he do? If he doesn't like the negative attention too bad. This almost sounds like Scientology's attempt to control the media.

brill

I don't see anything wrong in that, as they say is the same thing as reading the newspapers and magazines.

Also, bloggers must have to acknowledge the not so good result of publishing their thoughts, something that people from the printed press learnt even before the creation of the printed press, as strange as it may seem.

The fact that they can write anything they want does not make them immune to the responsibility of what they write, so those wannabe journalists should have the same responsibilities as the real journalists, if they want to be regarded as real journalists.