Freedom House: Press Freedom Survey 2000

These days those most insistent that the Internet is a really new thing with all sorts of happy, utopian political implications are the media moguls, who, through their flacks, mouthpieces and experts, desperately want to distract attention from what they're really accomplishing. It's as old as the first sleight-of-hand trick: distract attention from what's really happening by making a big fuss about something else.

During this time of unparalleled media concentration, the people who most benefit from it are the same ones who blather loudest about how the Internet "gives everybody an equal voice." Well, that's perfect nonsense on its own terms, of course, but it also distracts from the degree to which, especially in America, but increasingly around the world, the media are controlled by the greedy (very) few.

The problem of free access to information takes a more nefarious form in countries outside the first world. What makes this problem worse there is the degree to which the Internet is censored by governments who fear allowing citizens full and free access to information (to say nothing of the kind of political, activist organizational tool the Internet can be).

So, how free is the media, including the Internet, around the world? I don't know, but only because I haven't finished reading Freedom House's Press Freedom Survey for 2000. I haven't finished it because it's detailed, comprehensive, and desperately important.

If you care at all about media concentration or the political potential of the Internet, I recommend a careful study of Press Freedom Survey 2000.