Russia Times on SOPA/PIPA media blackout

With all the fooforaw surrounding the Republican race-to-the-bottom, the mainstream media has effectively ignored SOPA and PIPA. This is why we, the residents of the Internet, need to fight it. Yesterday, your access to Freethought Blogs was slightly inconvenienced via a splash page. Your access to Wikipedia was inconvenienced with a Javascript pop-over blackout. Your access to Reddit was eliminated entirely. And even Google censored their logo in protest.

But the mainstream media has been strangely silent.

Rachel Maddow included a segment on her show on Tuesday:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And yet, basically nobody else in the mainstream media covered it until the day of the protest itself.

Who did cover it ahead of time? The Russia Times.

And Al Jazeera.

Why is it that these outsiders, these foreign bodies, are capable of consciousness-raising before the local media? And why have so many Republicans, who supported and sponsored and co-wrote the bill, turned tail and dropped support now that consciousness is raised to these otherwise onerous laws? Why does it take a big backlash before someone says “this law is indefensible and wrong?” Why are they managing to get traction to begin with?

This issue does not fall along party lines. It falls along lines of people who understand the internet and how it works (and by consequence how it will not), and people who do not and simply swallow what the entertainment industry tells them about it. This is evidence, circumstantial evidence but evidence nonetheless, that the mainstream media is part of that selfsame entertainment industry, and it takes big protests and blackouts to show people exactly what’s at stake.

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Russia Times on SOPA/PIPA media blackout
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5 thoughts on “Russia Times on SOPA/PIPA media blackout

  1. 3

    Al Jazeera English has always been very good at reporting on the US (two excellent reports that come to mind immediately was one on poverty in the US, and another on the effects of oil extraction in ND on the people on the rez). OTOH, their accuracy and reliability regularly goes to shit when they report on the Middle East. So I guess all media suck at reporting on their home-regions

  2. Ken
    4

    “And why have so many Republicans, who supported and sponsored and co-wrote the bill, turned tail and dropped support now that consciousness is raised to these otherwise onerous laws”

    A fair question.

    However, you also need to ask the question, “And why have so many Democrats, who supported and sponsored and co-wrote the bill, continued to support these otherwise onerous laws?”

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