Those diehards who believe in the undisputed primacy of our national media should listen to the story of Daniel Hannan, a backbench MEP.

Hannan made a short speech aimed directly at Gordon Brown in the European Parliament on Tuesday this week. His efforts to persuade political reporters to cover his speech were, not unsurprisingly, ignored. A speech by an unknown MEP ain’t news.

But its become so. Hannan posted his speech on YouTube and bloggers from around the world link to it. Mainstream political commentators including Rush Limbaugh have followed. Even leftwingers will admit it’s a mightily impressive speech. In two days, the YouTube clip has had over 800,000 views.

But what does this tell us? That old media no longer has a monopoly on deciding what’s news and what’s not. Will be interesting to see whether events like this encourage newspapers and broadcasters to revise their view of what warrants a place on the editorial agenda.