Online Journalism - Ayo Menulis FISIP UAJY

7
‘That Balance’ and the New
World Information Order
Anytime an individual or an institution or an invention leaps so
far head of that balance (contemplated by the Founders) and
throws a system, whatever it might be – political, economic, technological
– out of balance, you’ve got a problem, because then it
can lead to the manipulation of information, it can lead to all
kinds of bad outcomes which we have seen historically. So we’re
going to have to deal with that. 1
Hillary Clinton’s reservations about the web on Matt Drudge’s revelations
about her husband and Monica Lewinsky were shared by
many. A similar call came from Chris Smith, then Labour’s heritage
spokesman in the UK: ‘Current laws were framed in the age of print.
We need a new framework of rules for the age of electronic communication.’
2 Public opinion on issues such as privacy and free speech
tends to swing violently depending on how it is inflected and is, in
any case, riven with contradiction. Most Westerners, for instance,
after Voltaire, jump to a visceral defence of free speech, until that
freedom triggers some cultural limit such as paedophilia, euthanasia
or abortion. It is by no means only totalitarian or fundamentalist
states which continue to regard the Internet with the deepest suspicion.
Access for the subjects of many states, even to email, is deeply
hedged about with legislation and surveillance and for many censorship
remains a ‘twin-headed, fire-breathing dragon that burns
high-speed data connections just as readily as banned books tossed
into a bonfire’, as Jeffrey Perlman evokes it. ‘One head is focused on
regulating access. Another draws a bead on content.’ 3 For the polit-