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Thursday, March 27, 2003
Internet Has Its Own Brand of War Censorship
Mark Glaser
posted: 2003-03-27
Al Jazeera, YellowTimes hit bumps
With so much mainstream media power held by large
corporations, the Internet was supposed to be the last
bastion of unedited, uncensored, truly independent
news. But it's never really lived up to that ideal in
full, and a few recent cases show just why. Arab cable
channel Al Jazeera recently launched an English
version of its Web site, but it was quickly hacked
down (along with the Arabic site) after the channel
showed controversial footage of POWs and dead
soldiers.
Just how explosive and divisive and interesting is the
Qatar-based channel? The Guardian reports that it has
gained 4 million subscribers recently in Europe, and
Google News was choking with so many American outlets
covering Al Jazeera's latest foibles. The New York
Stock Exchange booted its reporters from the trading
floor. In a bizarre twist, the broadcaster actually
called on the U.S. to help defend its freedom of the
press. "This is yet another example of people trying
to interfere with freedom of expression and the
press," Al Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout told
Reuters. "Freedom of the press must be protected. This
is not restricted only to America, it should be an
international effort."
Reuters' Merissa Marr noted that the channel's
popularity hadn't stopped it from being banned in many
Arab states in the past. InfoWorld's Paul Roberts had
the most information on the hack of Al Jazeera's site,
which might have come in tandem with a huge demand
from visitors wanting to see the video. While the
channel pushed for more bandwidth, its U.S. hosting
company, DataPipe, decided not to host the site
anymore. Al Jazeera was suspicious of its motives, and
suspected "an organization with know-how and money"
behind the hack. But experts told InfoWorld it was a
pretty simple "distributed denial of service" attack.
More ISP trouble
As you'd expect online, when one in-demand Web site
bites it, a mirror site usually springs up to take up
the slack. But for YellowTimes.org, showing stills of
the Al Jazeera photos brought it a different kind of
trouble. Its hosting company, Vortech, shut the site
for a few hours due to an adult content clause in its
contract. Reuters' Bernhard Warner wrote that "the
move is stoking fears that as more grisly images and
accounts of war surface, independent news sites trying
to establish a name for themselves will have to tone
down their coverage so as not to alienate readers and
the companies that keep their sites alive."
YellowTimes plans to go live again with new servers
based in San Francisco -- and then will likely have to
deal with a huge influx of traffic. For indies online,
if the hacks and ISPs don't kill you, there's always
the crush of popularity. YellowTimes' editor Erich
Marquardt was using the censorship issue to his
advantage, getting publicity in Reuters and in
WorldNetDaily, with a preview of an upcoming column
defending its decision on the photos.
"Here, at YellowTimes.org," writes reporter Firas
Al-Atraqchi, "we did not want these stories to go
untold. We wanted to bring the horrors of war
inflicted on all sides. We condemn killing, we condemn
war, and we certainly condemn persecution and torture.
We also condemn the intentional absence of truth.
Someone wants you, the reading public, to only gather
one-sided, monotone, Orwellian dispatch. News the way
they 'fashion' it. Or as CNN will have you believe,
the 'most reliable source for news.' I do beg your
pardon, no, we weren't shut down -- we were censored,
pure and simple."
Google and Jesus
Finally, there's the case of antiwar site Unknown
News, which simply wanted to buy an ad on Google that
read: "Who would Jesus bomb? Antiwar bumper stickers
from Unknown News." First Google rejected the ad
because it had language that "advocates against an
individual, group, or organization." When presented
with the fact that the site actually was against hate
and war, and not a hate speech site, Google took
another tack, saying they had to remove the Jesus
reference. Finally, with one more explanatory email,
Google allowed the ad. You can follow the entire email
back-and-forth at the Politech discussion list or at
Unknown News.
More troubling from Google (in the same Politech
thread) was a rejection by Google News to index
InfoShop News ("your online anarchist community").
Google responded that, "We are not accepting sites
where all articles are produced by one individual. We
are looking for sources with current news written by a
staff of reporters and edited by a staff editor." That
might make sense in the short run, but the Infoshop
defender noted that sites such as Indymedia, weblogs,
and others wouldn't make the cut on that constraint.
Nor would Drudge.
So, at the end of the day, is the Net more open to
controversial opinions (and photos)? Yes, the photos
do live on at other sites. But should small publishers
watch out for security holes, restrictive ISP
contracts, and omnipotent search engines? For sure.
Glaser Online regularly combs the following sites for
links to pertinent stories: OnlineJournalism.com,
IWantMedia, Romenesko, PaidContent.org, Google News
and AltaVista News.
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