Delirium Propaganda

Today a controversial news article was published by the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Notícias. According to the article, the Portuguese Communication Regulatory Entity (Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social) has confirmed that their reach has been extended to include websites and blogs. Basically the new inclusion states that people can now submit a complaint to the (ERC) concerning any dilemma involving a website or blog.

Although the new measures might sound like fair practices that will further benefit users and bloggers alike, in reality this couldn’t be any further from the truth. In Italy a new law is being analyzed in which all bloggers would be forced to register and acquire a certificate of approval. This regulatory entity would advise bloggers of their rights and obligations whilst also promoting the paying of taxes, even if the blog in question is nonprofit. Obviously that is only half the story, this law would also create a editorial organization with journalistic capabilities to monitor all sites.

Portuguese Politicians are now also interested in shutting (censoring) the nation’s voice and censoring mischief bloggers is the way of archiving this. Just a few days ago one of the most prominent Portuguese Television anchormen saw a disciplinary process instated for openly admitting that the administration of the government controlled RTP1 (Radio Televisão Portuguese) was encouraging the editing (censoring) of news to benefit certain political parties.

Many politicians fear the internet especially the blogosphere seeing as the normal fascist editorial laws do not apply or simply cannot be enforced. With the increase of citizen or free speech bloggers, controlling the media has become impossible given that these bloggers have managed to build a wide spread following and in many cases even outpaced the more traditional news sources.

With the power of speech in the hands of the common people, Governments are disarmed of their precious propaganda tools (media) that only serve to fabricate deceit. Controlling what people read is the easiest way to control what they think. I know this has become more than evident in many countries around the world.

I only ask that you please help me get the word out. Keeping the blogosphere open to free speech is the only way we can truly make this a better world for all.

Notice: Please note that the links provided in this article are from Portuguese sites. If you would like to read the original news articles please leave a comment bellow. I will gladly try my best to translate them into English as soon as possible.

[tags] blogosphere, bloggers, blogging, deceit, governments, Portuguese, Italian [/tags]