Guide Aims to Help Bloggers Beat Censors

Reporters Without Borders' ''Handbook for Blogger and Cyber-Dissidents'' is partly financed by the French government and includes technical advice on how to remain anonymous online. It was launched at the Apple Expo computer show in Paris on Thursday and can also be downloaded from RSF's Web site in Chinese, Arabic, Persian, English and French.

''Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure,'' Julien Pain, head of the watchdog's Internet Freedom desk, writes in the introduction.

In a bid to inspire budding Web diarists around the world, the 87-page booklet gives advice on setting up and running blogs, and on using pseudonyms and anonymous proxies, which can be used to replace easily traceable home computer addresses.

''With a bit of common sense, perseverance and especially by picking the right tools, any blogger should be able to overcome censorship,'' writes Pain.

AP/NYT, September 22, 2005

This to a considerable degree confirms what I have predicted for quite some time now - that with the mainstream media controlled by political or corporate interests - not that there is much difference between the two oftentimes - the bloggers would get more and more prominence due to their not being tied by political or corporate "correctness" - in other words due to the fact that they are free from the consors' reigns. Also note the fact that it was The New York Times that carried this AP report. So let us hope The Times draws the necessary conclusions from the rise of the bloggers and adjusts its reporting accordingly by carrying the real news as opposed to what the corporate elite would rather see reported. That is a nice hope; however, I am not overly optimistic.

tags: rsf  censorship  blog