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1996-03-11
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THE NET SHALL MAKE US FREE
by Joe Shea
Editor-in-Chief, The American Reporter
LOS ANGELES -- The men and women who [24 Hours of Democracy]
crowded into my small bungalow apartment
in the center of Hollywood were from 20 different nations in
Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. Our connection, now
personal, was the Internet.
As editor of the world's first online daily newspaper, The
American Reporter, I was invited by the United States Information
Service to host these journalists from around the world to
increase their understanding of the Net's potential for creating
a free press throughout the world.
One of the visitors was the deputy director-general of the
Xinhua official Chinese news agency, and with a nod of the head
he could confirm our top story for the day's paper on Chinese
leader Xiang Jemin's effort to rein in the generals who wanted to
attack Taiwan. He's becoming a subscriber, he told the USIS.
In discussions with journalists from Papua New Guinea,
Zambia, Guyana, Bosnia, Pakistan and points in all directions, I
saw the true dimensions of the Net's potential to catalyze a free
flow of information to the entire world. We are already doing
things to bring that about.
Our reporter in Indonesia, Andreas Harsono, writes
frequently for us about the efforts of the Suharto government to
arrest and jail journalists whose work threatens to reveal the
depth of the existing corruption in that country.
Imagine Andreas multiplied by 20, and then by as many
countries as there are on the globe, each journalist struggling
to tell the story of oppression and disinformation to all the Net
users of the world. It is hard to keep people enslaved by
ideology or force if they have an unlimited flow of truthful
information available to them from a freely accessible source.
To help keep us free here in America, The American Reporter
published an "indecent" commentary by Judge Steve Russell of San
Antonio, Texas to test the constitutionality of the
Communications in Decency Act signed by President Clinton just a
few minutes earlier, and then filed suit in New York to stop
enforcement of the law. We are waiting for a three-judge panel to
hear our case early in April.
The American Reporter feels we must resist all efforts at
"local," i.e., national, suppression and censorship everywhere,
or risk the loss of the ability of the Net to make democracy a
reality for ours and future generations. If we are successful in
doing so, the truth -- carried on the Net to the waiting, weary
world -- will truly make us free.
[Image]
Joe Shea
Editor-in-Chief
The American Reporter joeshea@netcom.com
http://www.newshare.com/Reporter/today.html