The YouTube Defense (Slate.com)
From a Brown alum... An article that looks at YouTube as a tool for human rights activists, esp. in an age of terror: The YouTube Defense.
Courts have pushed back against the Bush administration only tentatively, for they remain uncertain about the value of human rights in an age of terror. Fortunately for their cause, human rights lawyers are starting to understand how to put a thumb on the scale: YouTube....
YouTube and its ilk mean that today anyone can tell human rights stories. And as [Adel] Hamad's video shows, if the stories are told with enough brio and skill, the public will pay attention, and the government may be more likely to respond. Critics pooh-pooh the importance of all of this by pointing to the fact that civil rights advocates have traditionally had a friend in the press. But they're missing the point: YouTube goes where the mainstream media can't or won't go. It's visceral. It's story first, message second. And it gives advocates instant access to an audience in a way that press releases and op-eds never can.
Comments
The article really makes an interesting point. Is the government losing its power over the media? In a country that has prided itself on freedom of the press for over 200 years, I wonder if Americans will now begin to understand how much the press has been controlled in the past. YouTube has ushered in a new era of totally unrestricted information available to the public. Are we beginning to get stories and news that we would usually not be permitted to see? I think so. The government has historically taken the mantra "what they don't know won't hurt them," as evidence by the information withheld by the government and later uncovered from Vietnam. The real question is, now that we as citizens have easier access to information on the current state of Iraq (a situation that many compare to Vietnam in many ways), etc., will we use it to our advantage?
Posted by: Miriam Altman | April 2, 2007 07:57 PM