It’s evident that publishing has come full circle today ever since it was first declared in The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) that the freedom of the press is one of the greatest liberties that a human being is entitled to, and should not be controlled by despotic governments.
While our distinguished members of the Press continue to point out the apparent lack of ‘objectivity’ through citizen journalism, it still does play an important role in the fact-checking of any incident that causes concern on a national or global scale. Take for example the tragedy that struck Mumbai in November 2008, where instead of journalists providing us information, the blogs were written by normal citizens ‘in situ’ that gave people a play-by-play update of what was happening.
And one can only assume that in this heyday, the networks (read: despotic governments) that controlled the flow of information in one direction to the customer is now finding that they have no way to control the ‘nature of the beast’ while it expands exponentially through the power of the internet and creative applications (Read: Web 2.0) at their disposal in the quest for truthful journalism by letting people express their opinions as well, and thus creating an even playing field.
It’s obvious that the old cliché ‘history repeats itself’ makes itself apparent here, and thanks to the million of bloggers and those who share information both in the print and visual format, the world has turned into a place where people remain better informed while having the ‘freedom to publish’ once more.
After all, there is no room for double-standards when our goals in the collective aspire towards democracy.