Blogs promote free speech in repressive regimes
Amy Gahran at Poynter tells us about Saudi women finding their voice in the blogosphere only to find that voice later silenced within their own country. These Saudi bloggers tend to be younger, talk about taboo issues like sex and have some harsh words about their society.
As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, their blogs have become visible enough that a conservative blogging movement run by Saudi males has formed to counter and extinguish the fire they're fanning under the feet of their super-strict culture.
But this movement is having their own repressive tactics thrown right back at them. One female blogger who frequently travels abroad and muses on racy topics returned home to find the Saudi government had blocked her blog. Petitions by her fellow bloggers within the Kingdom quickly appeared to give the young liberal blogger her voice back.
Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine gives us a peek at Nick Kristof's latest column (locked behind the "Great Wall of New York," Jarvis' reference to TimesSelect), where the prize winning NYT columnist profiles bloggers in China.
After launching his own blogs with inflammatory content, as so far as the Communist Party is concerned, Kristof found that Party censors merely blanked out some words. Kristof concludes that the 30,000 people the Party employs to scan the Net will not be able to control 120 million Chinese Internet users.
These bloggers may not necessarily be practicing journalism. But the information superhighway and the freedom of expression it allows every user through personal publishing tools is bound to eventually bring down repressive regimes, which happens to be a journalistic principle of a free press.
Sources: Poynter, Christian Science Monitor, Buzzmachine
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Blogs are a new way to get your opinion out, even if people don't want to hear it. WHile this is the case with the majority of blogs I believe that these Saudi women have found a place to get their voices heard. These blogs are what most bolgs aren't. Relevant. Instead of hearing about Tom and his boring job we can hear the voices of women who are silnced in thier own countries. Unfortunatly because of the active oppression and censorship of these countries toward women thier voices are only heard by the outside world. While it is important for the world to hear the truth from the mouth of a Saudi woman or a Chinese dissenter these blogs could have actually fostered conversation and dissent. One voice can ripple to a thousand. From dissension light is born.