Week 8 Tutorial Task

In a world where we are all politically aware and if not dubbed a close minded fool, we are encouraged to choose and stick to our own political beleifs. The internet as communicative as it is, is a perfect outlet for expressing our political beliefs. Admittedly this can range from which political party you follow, who you hate, what you love, what is politically correct in terms of living and social justice.

The internet is a plethora of communication and ideas, as I have discussed extensively in other blogs. So if we can boradcast our most mundane of thoughts, why can't we broadcast and express our more interesting and controversial thoughts? Everywhere you look on the internet there is some outlet to express our political beliefs and also to learn what each other believes. This blog for example could serve as an outlet for someone to comment and express their beliefs and ideas. Patitions are spammed through countless inboxes and advertised on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace and Blog pages.

I don't know if anyone has ever been on Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/) but it is an interactive site and one of the areas one can look at it News and Politics. And being an avid Yahoo Answers user as i am, i bear wittness to the political debate and talk that takes place on this site. Yes, i will admitt i do not agree with all of the political ideas posted on the internet, but isn't that the beauty of the internet? That we can post, broadcast, promote, share and express our ideas. Un-edited, un-altered and uncensored.

There is this nasty rumor spreading that the Australian Government wishes to censor our internet calling it the "clean feed". Can I just say, this completely defeats the purpose of the internet. I don't like that my media is censored legt alone my inetrnet feed. If you give them the power to censor some of our internet they'll want to censor all of it.

I realize that censorship is a touchy subject, just bring it up in a room full of journalists and the tension is palpable. Does censorship have a place in democracy? Your politicians would say it does, your average joe probably doesn't care but your politically minded blogger will have something to say. I believe it does not have a place, I want my news raw, my politics un-edited. So censorship does not have a place in a democracy, we should all know the same things and be on the same level. Censorship prevents this.