Let me tell you a story of a society which built a liberated but centralized information system.
The main TV and radio stations uncritically report the progress of an unprovoked foreign war until one night, one man on one station uncharacteristicaly editorializes against it.
Media organizations through their leiason with foreign intelligence report falsely the atrocities of one side of a conflict, ensuring support for the other side which is actually committing atrocities.
The most heralded media organization in the nariona suppresses a story through an election which provides irrefutable proof that the state executive is running an illegal spying operation against the citizenry.
Is this Soviet Russia? Communist China? Tito's Yugoslavia? No, it is the United States prior to ubiquitous internet news.
Respectively I refer to Walter Cronkite's turn against the Vietnam war at the Tet Offensive, the misinformation campaign levied at the Nicoroguan Sandinistas and the New York Times decision to hold the warrantless wiretapping story until after the 2004 election.
I'm not sure that is a better world. I'm not sure if we aren't just looking at trade-offs, moderated media having its flaws and virtues, unmoderated having its own.
It is no wonder we shrink at the trials and tribulations of unmoderated information. They are new. But I think there is a tendency recently to overlook the costs our gatekeepers previously imparted to our society.
The main TV and radio stations uncritically report the progress of an unprovoked foreign war until one night, one man on one station uncharacteristicaly editorializes against it.
Media organizations through their leiason with foreign intelligence report falsely the atrocities of one side of a conflict, ensuring support for the other side which is actually committing atrocities.
The most heralded media organization in the nariona suppresses a story through an election which provides irrefutable proof that the state executive is running an illegal spying operation against the citizenry.
Is this Soviet Russia? Communist China? Tito's Yugoslavia? No, it is the United States prior to ubiquitous internet news.
Respectively I refer to Walter Cronkite's turn against the Vietnam war at the Tet Offensive, the misinformation campaign levied at the Nicoroguan Sandinistas and the New York Times decision to hold the warrantless wiretapping story until after the 2004 election.
I'm not sure that is a better world. I'm not sure if we aren't just looking at trade-offs, moderated media having its flaws and virtues, unmoderated having its own.
It is no wonder we shrink at the trials and tribulations of unmoderated information. They are new. But I think there is a tendency recently to overlook the costs our gatekeepers previously imparted to our society.