CHRIS SEGAL
Perspectives Editor
Remember the days of dial-up Internet connections and playing computer games with friends after school. The worst impact a computer could have on our lives as youngsters was when our oxen died trying to cross the river in the Oregon Trail. Computers and the Internet are now being used to evade government censorship.
The group, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), has released a new manual in five languages that outlines how to post blogs with complete anonymity. In the “Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents,” the RSF gives Internet users tools for evading government surveillance. The group has released this information to the general cyberspace public because it consider bloggers in countries like China and Iran, which have tried to control blogging, true journalists.
A blog is a personal Web site written in the form of a diary that contains mostly news regularly updated, according to the RSF. These sites can contain information in the form of text, pictures, external links, sound and video.
A major problem with all forms of blogs is the lack of prior review. There is no fact checking or editors grilling reporters over facts. The RSF is wrong to consider bloggers journalist. The cornerstone of journalism is credibility and objectivity. How can any bloggers claim credibility if they are publishing “facts” from an anonymous proxy server being routed through a network of computers? They can’t. They have no credibility as a nameless entities in cyberspace.
Look back a couple of years to the Drudge Report, which published rumors and news. The Drudge Report served a purpose — Matt Drudge heard of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and published it when the rest of the media would not. He had no facts to back up the story — he published a rumor that turned out to be true. Unlike anonymous bloggers who can publish anything without repercussions, Drudge has never claimed to be a journalist. He publishes anything of interest and then leaves it up to his readers to make up their own minds.
Blogs can serve a purpose in countries such as China and Iran that have incarcerated citizens for their Internet postings. According to the RSF, 62 people are imprisoned in China for posting articles that the government deemed to be “subversive.”
This has much wider implications than a few people posting information about their bosses stealing from the company.
The irresponsibility of the RSF shows in the group’s distribution of the manual. Anyone can go to their Web site and download it for free and then begin the six-step process to blog anonymously.
The decision made by the RSF to publish the handbook on their Web site and to allow free downloads has opened the door for anyone to post without fear of facing consequences. Any Pepperdine student can start his or her own blog and begin posting libelous content about other students, faculty members and administrators without fear of being put on probation or kicked out of an overseas program. This falls into the same category of the Mexican government distributing a flyer to its citizens on how to safely attempt an illegal border crossing.
This information needs to be shared with bloggers who are living in restrictive countries, not to any Tom, Dick or Harry. The free distribution and easy-to-follow instructions encourage bloggers to post without the little voice in their head asking if this is really worth losing their jobs over to post this comment.
According to the RSF, the role of the media in repressed countries is to relay state propaganda, not to objectively disseminate facts. In the United States, most blogs are of little importance. They are usually grammatically incorrect personal rumblings. In a country where there is no government censorship of the media, it is hard to understand why a free-press group would produce an English version of the manual.
The correct course of action for the RSF to promote the free press is to have some form of verification from users who are operating a blog in a country with a repressive government before providing the instructions. There are many different ways to promote the free press. Helping teenagers post death threats to their math teachers is not one of them.
Instead of posting anonymous “information” about some of my co-workers on my newly created secret blog, I think my time would be better spent trying to get my oxen to cross the Oregon Trail river without dying for once.
09-29-2005