Stay Informed: Enemies of the Internet List
There has been a lot of hand-wringing and arm waving happening on the Web over the new "Enemies of the Internet" list created by Reporters Without Borders (RWB). I think news organizations like the Washington Post and the Huffington Post should be on the list, too, for negligent reporting.
Bad news coverage, poor reporting, misleading the public, and omitting facts is a form of censorship. Do it online and it is cyber-censorship.
And it should be mentioned that today, March 12, is "World Day Against Cyber-Censorship."
I am getting a little tired of irresponsible news coverage by mainstream media. They never link to sources (which is easy to do), leave out the actual information itself, and then leverage the information that they do cover to promote their corporate political agenda. In the process, they mislead readers.
After reading a couple of these articles, I was under the impression that France was moved from the "under surveillance" list to the "Enemies of the Internet" list. Not true! That's the state of things today.
But while on the subject of France, the scathing report on France goes far beyond the rather lame criticism used in the reports about the status of France. This fits in awkwardly with a recent event hosted by France's president, Nicolas Sarkozy, at a favorite event of American bloggers, LeWeb, in Paris. There, he cajoled the "citizen journalists" who have not written a critical note since. But I digress.
The 2012 "Enemies of the Internet" are the following countries: Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
The countries under surveillance are: Australia, Egypt, Eritrea, France, India, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates.
The way RWB sees things, it must be pretty bad when France is on the watch list and Zimbabwe is not. But Zimbabwe has bigger issues, apparently.
Whatever the case, any mention of the enemies list must include a direct link to Reporters Without Borders. For years, I have been fighting the lack of links in most old newspapers and old magazines that still do not understand how the system works. I thought it was resolved years ago.
I recall going to work for Forbes during the dotcom run-up under the agreement that I could link out of articles, having noticed that the magazine only did internal links. As soon as a new guy got in, that immediately ended. This is always the doing of some marketing guy who could not care less about actually delivering information to the reader. I see most recently that it links out once more. But why is this an issue?
The thinking is as follows: Most people working in sales at a news organization assume that readers think so little of the publication that if the site links out, they will never return. Solution. Do not link out! Genius!
Back to Reporters Without Borders. If you look at any of the country-by-country reporting on the Reporters Without Borders site, you get a lengthy and detailed report. This should be targeted with a link to the site, rather than only letting the reader see a mediocre and often inaccurate summary cranked out minutes before deadline. There is some good stuff on this site.
So go visit the site and see for yourself what the enemies list is really all about.
You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.
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