This BBC article talks about how blogging is upsetting the apple cart in authoritarian regimes and the free and democratic West too.
An excerpt:
So why are authoritarian governments so worried about blogging?
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Julien Pain, Reporters Sans Frontières |
In the same way that spammers can reach millions of people in an easy way, ideas deemed dangerously democratic by many regimes can spread faster than bacteria on a petri-dish.
Julien Pain, of Reporters Sans Frontières, says: "Blogging is a very, very important tool in terms of freedom of expression.
"Even if you don't know html or how to set up your own website, using a blog without any technical skill you can become a publisher.
"That's why it is so interesting. It is a kind of a revolution now.
"In a country like Iran people couldn't express themselves and now they can, because they are using blogs to tell the world about what they are living and their conditions."
But bloggers are not just getting under the skin of authoritarian regimes.
In the West, particularly in America, they are also making waves among traditional journalists.
These are people working in what right-wing bloggers see as a cosy liberal club, and call MSM or mainstream media.
The term is designed to depict the traditional media as a self-serving branch of the establishment.
The World Editor's Forum particularly resents this and says it whiffs of a political campaign.
Bertrand Pecquerie, of the World Editors Forum, says: "I think we need a barrier, a sort of code of ethics for bloggers.
"There is a political agenda: right-wing bloggers saying that all media are liberal, that they have to attack the New York Times and Washington Post, even if there are differences between the two newspapers."