The List

My few regular readers will remember that I like to do top ten list. This link is actually much more detailed than a normal top ten list and even has an addendum. I think that one of the reasons that I like a list of things is because I work with adolescents. Kids don't have the attention span or desire to know a whole lot of things in an in depth manner and providing a list like this is an easy way to pique interest in a subject.

While informative and funny something that I find disturbing about these list is that they are too Amero-centric. Holy Cow! if they'd looked at the SCMP what would they have found? The China Daily? The Singapore Straights Time? Both ATV and TVB obviously slant certain news stories in various directions but I doubt either would admit to such.

I agree with the author of these list when he points out that the Internet did NOT make journalist less reliable but actually exposed some of them as liars. Matt Drudge didn't somehow make Bill Clinton ask Monica Lewinski for oral sex and the existence of EastWestSouthNorth didn't cause the movie reviews in Chengdu to be censored. Both these blogs (I'm not sure either of these is a blog. They might more usefully be defined as news aggregation services) simply expose what is already there. I'd have a lot more faith in the mass media if they'd do a better job of policing their own and admit they've had problems with trying to push an agenda. Every field has bad apples.

It kind of makes me uneasy when I read about media moguls and prominent journalist arguing for the censorship of the Internet , and make no mistake, that is exactly what Marvin Kalb was advocating in 1998 in the printed quote at the beginning of these articles. How can they advocate a "Free Press " and a controlled public Internet? I guess it is the old "Free speech for me but not for thee" syndrome.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who doesn't really trust Newspapers