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What are you looking forward to most after you finish summer classes?
MONDAY, JULY 21, 2014
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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
INTERNET NEWS
Online information sharing prevents bias
These past few weeks have been an absolute maelstrom of news. Posts arrived from
10 different sources concerning the MH17 flight that crash-landed in Ukraine. Reports of missiles, rebels, and confusing and conflicting stories came through the pipeline.
As the dust settled, the story became more clear, but for those first few days, the only information that I even considered came from online. Cross-checking numerous sites and watching videos as they came in, the Internet helped me form a picture of the event free of pundits and propaganda.
Those in Russia watching TV most likely couldn't say the same. A journalist at Russia Today, one of the largest TV networks in Russia, resigned shortly after coverage began, claiming that the network flat-out
lied about the events surrounding flight MH17 and initially reported that Ukraine was to blame.
PunditFact, a division of the Tampa Bay Times' fact checking site Politifact.com, released "scorecards"
What's more, she claimed that this was simply "the straw that broke the camel's back." She said the culture of Russia Today was one of manipulation and fact-twisting. That's a sign of future problems if we aren't careful.
of the truth of statements on popular American TV news networks at the beginning of this month. The site found 60 percent of statements on Fox News were found to be at least "mostly false." NBC and MSNBC had a hardly better score of 46 percent.
The Internet is the only real way to combat any bias in TV news stations. Checking facts free of limits and political manipulation remains the one true expression of free speech. Pretty much every other channel is polluted.
And I'm not talking simply about news sites. If anything, they're suspect as well. I'm talking about personal interactions and peer-to-peer sharing. Being able to share information with our networks is essential to a healthy modern society.
The United Nations has affirmed that Internet access is a human right
on numerous occasions in the past decade, from the 2003 World Summit on the Information Society to the more recent Rapporteur Report, citing access to free information, free speech and even economic freedoms.
We take for granted how insanely powerful the Internet can be. By no fault of our own, Internet access has been almost ubiquitous for about 20 years. Recognizing how precious of a resource we hold in our fingertips is the first step to preserving it for ourselves and the world. Without it, informing yourself becomes a lesson in fascism.
Wil Kenney is a junior from Leawood studying English. Find him on Twitter @wilkenney
@wilkenney
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