Eason Jordan, the chief news executive of the American television channel, CNN, resigned last week following intense blog pressure after he had made remarks about US troops in Iraq killing journalists.

A study of British political blogs carried out by the Hansard Society last year criticised the UK’s main sites for pandering to "internet connoisseurs rather than ordinary members of the public".

"Political blogging in the UK is much more embryonic and exclusive than in the US," said Ross Ferguson, the new media manager at the Hansard Society.

"UK bloggers have yet to decide whether blogging is a means to promote transparency in politics or another tool for party campaigning."

In contrast, American bloggers have latched on to deeply emotive issues.

Mr Jordan's professional demise follows that of Dan Rather, the veteran CBS news presenter, who came under attack after levelling accusations over President George W Bush's military service. The subsequent probe by the channel, triggered by blog reports, led to the departure of four high-level executives from the network.

Last month a left-leaning White House journalist was revealed to have used a false identity to obtain his press credentials by boggers from The Daily Kos.

Trent Lott was forced to resign as Senate Majority Leader after blogs such as Instapundit , which is run by the University of Tennessee law professor, Glenn Reynolds, and Talking Points Memo, by the political columnist Joshua Marshall, latched onto a short internet story on racist comments.

The progression to more aggressive, American-style blogging in the UK has been led by Tim Ireland, who runs the www.bloggerheads.com website.

Mr Ireland admits that British bloggers have not made the same impact as their American peers but says that the gap between the two groups is closing. He believes that this year's general election is likely to accelerate the process.

There remain significant cultural differences between America and Britain, not least the absence in the US of national tabloid newspapers which have performed a similar role to American bloggers.

But as the UK moves increasingly online, this is changing. Mr Ireland is responsible for the tim-yeo.blogspot.com website. The site appears to have been launched by Tim Yeo, the Conservatives' spokesman on Environment and Transport. Yet it is actually an elaborately constructed and scathing spoof, which describes itself as being "dedicated to the stalking of one of our finest Conservative MPs".

Gallingly for Mr Yeo, the spoof site, which attacks his political career, appears at the top of the rankings - above his own official site - on internet search engines.

Similar websites have been set up for other MPs to spur them into starting their own blogs.

"British blogging is running as a very close second to America, I think primarily because we are talking about a much smaller population," said Mr Ireland. "True, no British scalps have been taken yet, but give it time."

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