Power to the people? Freedom of expression and accountability online

“Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped with barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.” - Ronald Reagan

This was the conclusion of the, by then, former White House incumbent, during an interview with the Guardian in 1989. It was during that same year that the world witnessed the fall of the Berlin Wall and, as a consequence, a de facto end to over 40 years of Cold War.

Presumably, many people reading Reagan’s words at the time were simply relieved that the stand-off had been resolved largely by Glasnost, as opposed to a macabre homage to Stanley Kubrick.

Yet, a quick examination of today’s digital world would suggest that  ”The Gipper” and his predictions were often surprisingly prescient.

Since the end of the Cold War, the internet and web 2.0, have led to a surge in global communication and the dissemination of information. Whilst repressive states still exist, their attempts to control and manage information has become infinitely more difficult, as recent events in Tibet and Zimbabwe have shown.

In an era of 24-hour news, blogging, mobile phones, Twitter and You.tube, the capacity of governments, or anyone else, to control what individuals hear and say has been significantly reduced. This can only be considered a good thing…right?

As you might expect, there is a flip-side to this new-found freedom of expression: that of moderating content and the issue of accountability for published material. I should at this point make it clear that I do not advocate censorship and overwhelmingly subscribe to Voltaire’s maxim regarding free speech. This is also an ethos promoted by The Daily Telegraph on its blog site MyTelegraph , which, since May 2007, has allowed “anyone” to have their say.

This includes BNP councillor Richard Barnbrook, who (regrettably) finds ample time to regularly air his odious views on everything from immigration to Lily Allen. Of course, it would be all too easy to pillory the Telegraph for allowing this. By allowing the likes of Barnbrook to have their say might imply that you in some way condone or are sympathetic to his views.

The Telegraph’s response is that it has no moral right or desire to determine who can say what, and that the best way to undermine extremist views is by exposing them to public ridicule and contempt. Furthermore, according to MyTelegraph Communities Editor, Shane Richmond, Barnbrook’s posts are closely monitored by the Telegraph’s lawyers for anything that could be deemed illegal.

Such an approach is fine when dealing with relatively high profile individuals such as Barnbrook, but what about the millions of other blogs and social media outlets out there?

Traditional media formats are overseen and regulated by bodies such as Ofcom and the PCC. However, as the relationship between professional media and consumer further intertwines, the lines on contempt and defamation are becoming increasingly blurred.

Indeed, if the recent Manuelgate debacle at BBC Radio 2 is anything to go by, media professionals can sometimes not be trusted to moderate their own content, let alone their audience’s.

By Richmond’s own admission, the MyTelegraph site does not read or moderate the majority of its user content. This is because, perversely, not reading is often the safest approach in terms of legal accountability.

By reading and approving content (or worse still approving and then reading content) media organisations can potentially be held directly responsible should anything of a defamatory and/or libellous nature be published. By not reading what users send in, editors effectively absolve themselves of responsibility.

Surely, we can do better than this?

Web technologies and social medias have advanced so rapidly that the old guard have not had time to work out how to effectively regulate what goes on, or reform laws that will inevitably become outmoded. This it seems will be a challenge the media will have to face for many years to come.

To Blog or not to Blog?

Last week’s introductory lecture in online journalism, and the impact technology has and is having on the industry, provided much food for thought. Legend has it that during the 1980s the then Sun editor, Kelvin McKenzie, suggested that, one day, the only people that would count for anything in society would be “the journalists”.

Two decades on, and the swaggering tone of McKenzie’s prognostics appear wholly misplaced. The rise of the Internet and the advent of web 2.0, have thrown the traditional media into utter disarray. RSS feeds, youtube and, above all, blogging have conspired to emancipate the public from its dependence on the established media. This newfound empowerment culminated in Time magazine bestowing bloggers with the coveted “Person of the year” award 2006. Could it be that the digital revolution may one day attain a historical significance comparable to that of the Guttenberg press?

Unsurprisingly, the process of “media democratisation” has aroused much consternation amongst the ranks of professional journalists, many of whom hold nothing but distain for this perceived amateurism. Whilst these so-called “citizen journalists” may possess a platform, very often they do not have the credentials supposedly required to validate their opinions. Admittedly, a lot of what is posted online can veer from trite musings to semi-deranged polemics, but to dismiss all blogs in this fashion would be short sighted.

Since anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can start a blog, the potential for a blogger to be in the right place at the right time is considerable. At the beginning of the Iraq war, the Guardian began profiling the postings of a Baghdad based blogger under the pseudonym “Salam Pax”.

Although not a professional journalist, Pax was able to continue updating the outside world as to the day-to-day realities of living in post-war Iraq, long after western correspondents had been forced behind the walls of the Green-Zone.

By contrast, some blogs have aroused great attention for all the wrong reasons. A Church of England clergyman was recently shown to have aired some rather unsavoury views on his personal blog causing sizeable public repercussions. Whilst an isolated incident such as this is unlikely to cause irreparable harm, it none the less illustrates the power of blogging, and the caution that should be employed when engaging in it.

The conclusion I have reached since my initiation into the online realm is that the professional journalist no longer holds carte blanche on the dissemination of information and the setting of news agendas. The only existing certainty now open to aspiring journos such as myself is that the profession/ trade is going to have to undergo a transformation of seismic proportions, and we’d better be ready for it!