His Point of View

Near the middle and end of the video he refers to the free information available on the internet, and how mainstream media is not “real” news.  This immediately made me think of the numerous stories in the news about entities which are attempting to restrict access to the internet in countries around the world.  In China the internet is censored on a massive scale, Iran institutes internet blackouts during times of unrest,  in the US Telecommunications companies are attempting to block legislation which would prevent them from charging customers for the amount of data they consume.  Governments are clearly using the flow of information in attempts to control their citizens.  In years past these controlling entities could easily manipulate the information disseminated via a few media outlets, but the internet allows each person in the world to be a possible news source, and no government can control every internet user in the world.  This is a huge threat to any entity which is using information to influence a population.   Every government uses information to manipulate the population under its providence.  All governments of the world either restrict certain information which is deemed sensitive, manipulate information before it is distributed, create information to be distributed, or in some way influence popular opinion by use or restriction of information.  This is not always a bad thing, as the world would not be safe if all of the information held by certain government bodies were made publicly available.  But the free flow of information affects these governments’ ability to protect, control and shape the information that is distributed.  If these entities can not control the information that flows within their boundaries they risk dramatic changes to the status quo, at the hand of the masses who may rise up against the system which is seen as an oppressive force.  People do not push for changes until they realize that there are alternatives to their current reality.  The more information people have the more likely they are to realize when they are being treated unfairly, soon after that realization it will become possible for their mind to conceive a possible method to obtain equality.  The free flow of information puts every church, government, leader, or other group which asserts power at risk of losing what they have worked for so very hard, for centuries to establish.

Mainstream media empires are facing their demise at the hand of free information available online.  Newspapers are nearly obsolete due to the fact that we no longer have to wait until tomorrow morning to get today’s news.  We can use the internet to access sites such as www.reddit.com, www.digg.com, www.stumbleupon.com and www.youtube.com to access news before it even airs on local and network broadcast news.  Live streaming video sites such as www.ustream.com and www.qik.com allow everyone with certain smart phones to broadcast live, unedited, uncensored video to the world at any given moment and from any location with a cellular signal.  No other media format aside from the internet allows such unrestricted access to world events.  I have used the sites above to view stories and videos days before www.cnn.com or www.ajc.com, or any other mainstream media site reported the story.   This is an interesting article which illustrates how quickly news now travels via the internet (click here to read article).  The writer of that article tracked the speed at which the news of Michael Jackson’s death spread, and at what time each news source reported the information.  Needless to say, that newspapers do not even rank as sources of breaking news any longer.  Not so long ago the morning paper was the source of most people’s current events.  Think about the number of major news stories from recent history which would have never been reported had it not been for social media forums.  If you are having trouble I will name a few to jog your memory; the uprising in Iran which resulted in the camera phone video of Neda Soltan allegedly being murdered in the streets by an unknown shooter, or the story of James Karl Buck, who started the Twitter craze by sending a Tweet to friends that he had been arrested in Egypt, and the police officer in Washington DC who wielded a pistol at a snowball fight.   The tides have turned, mainstream media outlets are threatened by the flow of free information.  Newspapers are going out of business or eliminating the print editions to focus solely on online publications, cable networks are in the cross-hairs next, as internet video quickly becomes a more rapid source of live and unedited information.  The internet is allowing the masses to have access to the “real” news, instead of the version of the news media conglomerates and/or governments want published.  That is if we take the time to find the “real” news, as it is no longer being presented to us on our doorstep each morning wrapped neatly in a plastic wrapper.

On the other side of the coin the internet news sources can be extremely unreliable when it comes to breaking news.  Unlike the old days of mainstream media, and I do emphasize the OLD DAYS when sources were verified before the story was run; the internet self corrects (verifies sources) after the news has gone public.  This phenomena is called correction or self-correction.  As news breaks online people perform fact checking, other witnesses surface, and in some cases the subject of the news can release a statement.  Many of those events begin to occur seconds to hours after news breaks.  Over a short period of time fraudulent and false reports are identified and are quickly ignored by the majority of internet users.   But we must all use caution as we digest breaking stories, as it may take hours for the facts to be verified and the “self-corrections” to become publicized.

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The internet is the biggest game changer we have seen during our lifetime.  We must protect our ability to communicate freely.  If knowledge is power, the internet is the most powerful weapon created by man to date.

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