Thomas Nybergh’s pages

Good grief, what are these MEP asshats thinking?

I’m against ownership concentration as much as the next guy, but I wonder what pluralism in media policy has to do with blogs putting “journalists and other media professionals under pressure”. I don’t see how regulation of before unseen ways in which potentially independent, anonymous citizens can express themselves could have any effect on privately owned media’s current ability or inability to act as a “watchdog for democracy”.

Do these clowns really believe that biased blogs are anywhere near of becoming as big of a threat to democracy as mainstream media already is in some countries? These MEPs were probably just participating in rituals of verbal incontinence at a press event to celebrate some report they’ve written, but it’s always breathtaking to see how any topic related to the Internet is a good platform for letting clueless people sound like insane authoritarians.

Below are the most dubious parts of the article:

“Weblogs and other new on-line media pose new challenges, say MEPs. The growth of commercial media outlets for user-generated content, such as photos and videos, used without paying a fee, raises problems of ethics and privacy, and puts journalists and other media professionals under pressure, they say.

The report “on concentration and pluralism in the media in the European Union” - drafted by Estonian Socialist Marianne Mikko - also warns against the concentration of the media in the hands of a few companies because the media is vital to safeguarding democracy. “The media remains a powerful tool, which should not be treated solely in economic terms,” she said. The report calls for social and legal guarantees to journalists and editors. It will be put to the vote in the full plenary in the future.
…
Asked if she considered bloggers to be “a threat”, she said “we do not see bloggers as a threat. They are in position, however, to considerably pollute cyberspace. We already have too much spam, misinformation and malicious intent in cyberspace”. She added, “I think the public is still very trusting towards blogs, it is still seen as sincere. And it should remain sincere. For that we need a quality mark, a disclosure of who is really writing and why.”"

[via:Piraattiliitto (in Finnish)]