| Of course speech in general is more regulated in Britain, with much tougher libel laws (although recently eased), but it's not difficult to imagine a similar push to regulate US bloggers with US lawmakers saying things like this:
...blogs are something we're going to have to deal with in the future. You can write or say anything.
And censorship of blogs will be based on Blair's premise that bloggers only increase partisan vitriol and make it difficult for politicians to work. If that sounds familiar, it should:
[Corey] Stapleton said he was frustrated by the media attention, especially from bloggers, whom he calls the "angry, unaccountable, anonymous media."
"We change our language that we choose almost as frequently as we change the passwords on our laptop," Stapleton says. "We've just learned to hide our differences in political correctness."
Criticism by liberal blogs does more harm to a citizen legislature like Montana's, Stapleton says, than to professional politicians. "It dissuades average, moral people from wanting to get involved."
Remember, Stapleton made these accusations shortly after taking heat for saying "...'no one in the Negro caucus' objected to the Legislature working on Martin Luther King Day."
That is, it's our fault he made racist remarks.
Of course, we shouldn't be surprised that politicians are irked by the blogs' tendency to hold them accountable for what they say, promise, and do. It's only natural that they'd like to silence media they can't control, and that is highly critical of what they do.
Certainly I'm the last person to claim that blogs should be considered a higher form of media, or communication, or journalism, or whatever. It is what it is: a babble of voices of all kinds. It's intensely democratic, accompanied by all the frailties of the human race it so aptly represents. There are good blogs and bad blogs; intelligent commentators and shallow ones; bullies and angels and comedians and provocateurs and agents and salespeople and prophets and and and...
But to claim that blogs -- blogs? -- are responsible for shrill partisan politics-- After all, we were quite gentlemanly and -womanly compared to the actual bad boys in the Legislature, weren't we? And you won't find anyone near as extreme in their politics and beliefs as you would chairing the state's House Education Committee.
Ultimately the pushback against blogging and other assorted Internet activities is about control.
Michael Gorman, posting (ironically) in Britannica's blog pretty much sums it up in this well-written rant against the democratization of information as a result of the 'Net (emphasis mine):
[Gorman's researched-based commentary on an art piece] typifies the difference between the print world of scholarly and educational publishing and the often-anarchic world of the Internet. The difference is in the authenticity and fixity of the former (that its creator is reputable and it is what it says it is), the expertise that has given it credibility, and the scholarly apparatus that makes the recorded knowledge accessible on the one hand and the lack of authenticity, expertise, and complex finding aids in the latter. The difference is not, emphatically not, in the communication technology involved. Print does not necessarily bestow authenticity, and an increasing number of digital resources do not, by themselves, reflect an increase in expertise. The task before us is to extend into the digital world the virtues of authenticity, expertise, and scholarly apparatus that have evolved over the 500 years of print, virtues often absent in the manuscript age that preceded print.
There are some great points here. The Internet does obscure good information from bad. A scholarly, peer-reviewed work is generally more trustworthy than a slap-dash blog entry. On the other hand, Gorman's model is a top-down view of the world, in which information should be published - not because of its inherent value - but because of its credentials. It's that kind of thinking that leads to well-intentioned censorship.
What we really need isn't the regulation of the Internet, honor badges and so forth, but better skills in discerning good information from bad. In other words, more emphasis in education, not on "hard" sciences and business (useless degree, by the way), but on the "soft" humanitarian skills of rhetoric and interpretation. We need to arm students with the tools of comprehension, of thought. Using credentials or authority to judge value of an idea is, of course, an integral part of those skills, but should not be limited to that. Sometimes beautiful ideas come from sordid sources.
After all, trusting blindly in "credentials" is what brought us David Broder, Thomas Friedman, William Kristol and the Iraq War. Gatekeeping information -- granting a monopoly of opinion to the chattering inside-the-Beltway punditry -- is the logical outcome of Gorman's thesis. That's cyanide for politics, for society, for community.
At least, that's my opinion. But I'm just some hack blogger, completely uncredentialed. |
