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A quick addendum to my last Gatewatching post, which discussed why in the face of a journalistic environment more concerned with scoring points than reporting on the issues of the day it's not such a bad idea if politicians choose to converse with citizens outside of the media glare: from what I've seen so far, quite a few of the journalists reporting on the 2020 Summit have similarly succumbed to the temptation to file lazy stories poking fun at summit procedures rather than investing the time necessary to inform the rest of the country about what's actually being discussed.

Vacuous stories such as this one by Annabel Crabb make my point for me; all I get from this 'report' is that Annabel couldn't be bothered to find out what's actually happening, and chose instead to pick easy targets. In a further update in the comments to the story, Annabel adds in the tone of a jilted lover: "you will be interested to hear that by late morning they had closed off the Creativity group session to the media" - to which I can only say, good for them! Perhaps without interruptions by journalists more interested in what brand of butchers' paper is being used than what ideas are being generated, the summitteers can actually get some work done.