RSF (Reporters Without Borders) Handbook for bloggers and “cyber-dissidents”
Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they’re tremendous tools of freedom of expression.
Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest.
Reporters Without Borders has produced this handbook to help them, with handy tips and technical advice on how to to remain anonymous and to get round censorship, by choosing the most suitable method for each situation. It also explains how to set up and make the most of a blog, to publicize it (getting it picked up efficiently by search-engines) and to establish its credibility through observing basic ethical and journalistic principles.
This is a pretty good resource; it contains a collection of good articles on blogging by various authors, many aimed at those who are overcoming censorship via the self-publishing model that blogging brings to the world.
7 Comments
That is a tremendous resource. Without the internet, material like this, and the desire of some people to get resources in the hands of the people, this country would be a much darker place. Thanks for being one of “those people.”
By the way you have 2 tythyl links in your sidebar under “blogs-friends”
I’ve been meaning to clean up (or get rid of) that link section for a while now.
looks like i need to post more about pooping.
What concerns me are these high profile blog sites writing ideological blither and the host censoring anyone who responds adversely to what they are saying.
Is this not a compromise of what the blog is all about?
and should it not be somehow regulated?
I may not be familiar with any of the sites that you are referring to, but I know there are some out there that resemble what you’ve described. So here are my opinions on them:
I think the primary purpose of a blog is to allow anyone the ability to publish their thoughts and opinions, whatever those may be. For me, this is what is revolutionary about blogs, because the ability to publish freely to a worldwide audience was never before available to so many people.
Now, if a person who is publishing their thoughts chooses to allow comments and/or conversation, I believe that is a good thing, and should be encouraged (and uncensored) because it furthers the cause / concept of free speech and discussion. However, I do believe allowing commenting is an important but secondary and even optional goal of a blog. So, in answer to your first question, I don’t think that it’s necessarily a “compromise of what a blog is all about”, just maybe not quite living up to it’s fullest potential, but this is a choice that should be left to the individual publisher of a given blog.
Is some sense, all blog owners have to “censor” to some degree, just in order to deal with the spam issue. On this site I regularly get hundreds (sometimes more than a thousand) spam comments daily, so you might say that I am “censoring” those, in order to provide a better atmosphere for discussion. The difference is that I would never censor any comment that was from a real person and had something to do with the conversation. That’s my personal standard; others may feel differently, and that’s up to them.
As for the second question of how it should be regulated, I am strictly opposed to any attempt to regulate blog publishing (or any kind of publishing for that matter), other than the right of the publisher themselves to regulate the content in their system. If you’re saying that certain blogs that you disagree with should be forced to host opposing viewpoints (in the form of comments or whatever other form may be appropriate), then I would disagree; this should always be a voluntary practice.
It is certainly OK to question those that choose not to do this, even if that means starting your own blog (or other publishing channel) to do so. One site that your comment really reminded me of is PowerLine, which a friend of mine pointed me to a while back. On the first page of posts I looked at alone, there were several leaps in logic that formed a flawed foundation for their points (which I disagreed with), and I did feel that it was a little frustrating not to be able to respond on their site, but that choice is completely up to them. For whatever reason, they are not interested in engaging in discussion about it.
You have a very good take on the situation and I appreciate your views. What is most disconcerting for me is that some blogs seem to be very highly regarded, to the point where some people may even see them or consider them to be actual sites of official journalism - and it is these kinds of sites which I believe should print all comments (except of course malicious or slanderous ones). The first few comments I made were printed because they were mostly just engaging the topic, but once I began to write things that were poignantly critical of the views, I was banned from posting anything ever again. Simply made me furious.
Ya, that stinks.