Wednesday, April 11, 2007 . 8:33 PM

New Media (Power to the People or a Threat to Stability)

New media, blogging as what I'm doing now, I feel is a threat to stability. After evaluating the two articles, "The Media War on Terror" as well as "Blogs and The Freedom of Speech," I do believe that the new media is probably a threat to the people. Just by looking all around us. The media has turned into political propoganda. All that talk about the freedom of speech, as seen in my previous post in Chapter 4, there are media agencies getting banned. In addition, look at this extract,


" In Libya, former bookseller Abdel Razak al-Mansouri was sentenced to 18 months in prison for making fun of President Mohammar Khaddafi online. Two Internet users have been jailed and tortured in Syria, one for posting photos online of a pro-Kurdish demonstration in Damascus and the other for simply passing on an e-mailed newsletter the regime considers illegal. "


If bloggers are being tortured just for posting photos that are pro-Kurdish, then would the people of these opressed states ever dare to blog again. People fear for their heads, as a result, who would ever there to blog again. Indeed, blogs have provided with us invaluable first-hand information of news around the world, but with this increasing wave of government censorship, how would you call this power to the people.

Now for the other article, "the Media War on Terror" by Donald Rumsfield, which speaks of terror organizations using the media to poison the minds of Muslims and break the will of the free people. It is indeed true that media has become a powerful propoganda tool. Look at Rumsfield's article itself, he is also using propoganda in an attempt to influence his own countrymen to support the war on terror. Below is an extract of propoganda. Do note that this extract by Rumsfield is likely to be propoganda as well, so read it with a open mind.


"Regrettably, many of the news channels being watched through these dishes are hostile to the West. Media outlets in many parts of the world often serve only to inflame and distort – rather than to explain and inform. While al-Qaeda and extremist movements have used this forum for many years, further poisoning the Muslim public’s view of the West, we in the West have barely even begun to compete.

We saw this with the false allegations of the desecration of a Koran last year. First published in a weekly news magazine, the story was then posted on Web sites, sent in e-mails, and repeated on satellite television and radio stations for days before the facts could be discovered. That false story incited deadly anti-American riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan."


All around us, we have sources of news and media, however, a large portion of it is contaminated with propoganda, to delude the people with untruths. From the Iraq war to jihad, attempts are made to brainwash the audience, and much of these attempts are successful as proven by the increasing numbers of teen terrorists, willing to blow themselves up. I personally feel that while media, in this case the introduction of blogging, may be a source of power to the people, it has largely been once again been turned into propoganda tool. Hence making it a threat to stability