January 17, 1998:

Eisenhower in one of his televised news conferences

January 19, 1955: Another pivotal moment for Washington journalism occurred when President Dwight D. Eisenhower allowed the first televised presidential news conference from the White House. Before this time, the American people could only learn of the President’s remarks through reprints in newspapers by other journalists. Television allowed people to engage more closely with the President and the issues at hand, since they could now hear and him speaking for himself right in their living rooms. Although it wasn’t until John F. Kennedy’s administration that presidential news conferences were televised live, Eisenhower took an important first step towards increasing the level of transparency between the federal government and the public.

Image from parody of "The Raven" from "The Simpsons"

January 29, 1845: On this day, one of the best-known poems by one of America’s best-known poets was published when Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” graced the pages of the New York Evening Mirror. Poe’s piece about a man lamenting the loss of his beloved Lenore has fascinated generations of readers with its macabre story juxtaposed against a singsong rhyme structure, and it has been the subject of more than a few parodies.

As Mr. Noon notes in his post on the New York Times blog, Tell the Raven is still a work in progress.  He hoped that the blog would help connect his students with other schools in Alaska, but so far that hasn’t happened–although they have been connecting with students in Australia.  I admire that the students are encouraged to write and share their thoughts, and that they have an adult mentor like Mr. Noon to review their posts and help them consider how they want to present themselves to their classmates and to the world.  The students get to learn about everything the Web has to offer, and have a guide to show them how to have a positive experience online.  For Mr. Noon, he gets to learn more about what his students are doing and what interests them in class, and of course parents get learn more about their children.  Everybody wins.

If you’re a teacher using multimedia in the classroom, tell us about it and share your ideas!

Dates: December 1st, 8th and 15th

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Explore the many ways you can present yourself on the Internet through social networking websites and blogs.  Learn what to include (and what not to include) in an online profile, and how to build your own blog!

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I’ll spare you a recap of the entire article, but let’s think about this concept for a second, and what might happen if it were to be instituted.  It would be nearly impossible to enforce this law, since as they say, on the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.  Credentials and identities can be easily faked, as with the fake Steve Jobs blog.  Libel and copyright lawsuits follow, of course, and free speech is ultimately somewhat inhibited as a result, but in the end the efforts by a government body to regulate who can post what on the Internet is nothing more than a silly attempt at policing our intelligence.

It is up to us, the people who read blogs and otherwise surf the Web for content, to question the reliability of what we find.  When you read a scholarly report, it is expected  and suggested that you look at the citations and assess the source for yourself.  When writing a paper of your own, you’re expected to assess your own sources.  Why should it be any different for something you find on the Internet?

Regulation of the Web is a tricky topic.  A conversation about free speech online easily turns to online child pornography and material that seems designed with malicious intent, such as instructions for how to make a bomb.  (For the curious, see the results of a Google search for “free speech online” which results in over 10 million hits, and you can join the debate.)  In the end, however, it is and always should be our responsibility to ask questions about the things we see and read both on the Internet and in the real world.  It’s up to us to determine reliability and perform our own “due diligence” before accepting anything as gospel.  Perhaps the efforts of Mikko and the EU Parliament would be better spent by investing in media literacy and the critical thinking skills that go with it.

Anyone who really wants to find what you’ve put up can do so, and they can do so decades later.  A mistake made on the Internet can last forever.  Even if you take down an item or encrypt it, there’s no knowing if someone else somewhere copied it or wrote about it online. Emily Gould discovered all of this the hard way, and throughout the article one wonders if she’s really been able to forgive herself for some of the damage she did both to herself and those she cared about.

We’re not here to tell you that you shouldn’t blog, or that you shouldn’t share pictures and videos online.  Obviously, we write a blog, and we post pictures here.  Our hope is that the millions of other people who put themselves on the Web every day take the time to consider how what they post can affect their loved ones, their own personal lives, and their futures.

When you are creating an online profile or posting a piece of your writing, it is of the utmost importance to remember that the content is out there forever. It is not like graffiti that can be painted over or washed off. I think that for the most part, people are fairly responsible and hold themselves to some degree of accountability, but the opportunity is there for anyone to post a nasty anonymous comment and have it published permanently, which happens too often. This aligns with the spirit of free speech–whether something is hateful, subversive or innovative, you can say it–but I question whether Internet users are catching up to the level of responsibility they need to have when publishing comments and content.

I agree with Bob Garfield when he says there is a difference between commentary and vandalism, and we need to teach people that difference. The advent of the Honesty Box on Facebook is used by some to declare a secret crush on a user, by others as a conduit for cyberbullying. It is up to the user to do the right thing.

Safe and responsible use of the Internet is everyone’s responsibility. The ability to publish original content is not going anywhere soon, at least in the United States, and so it’s up to us to talk to each other about accountability and standards of decency. It has been suggested that perhaps comments sections need to be regulated, but to me, this seems to be the equivalent of confiscating someone’s illegal handgun when there’s a knife shop down the block. There is always going to be a way to be mean, cowardly and irresponsible, and we didn’t need the Internet to teach us how to act that way. The Internet is nothing if not open and free, and I do believe the positives of a free Internet outweigh the negatives. The best solution is to hold ourselves and each other to the golden rule of do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

-Emily Long

Target put out this ad which has been scrutinized by ShapingYouth.org, an organization which looks at the influence of media and marketing on youth. ShapingYouth wrote a critical email but Target refused to respond on the basis that ShapingYouth is a blog, and Target “does not participate with nontraditional media outlets.”

This is a big deal for a few reasons, perhaps most notably because a retail giant refuses to accept responsibility for its choices–if a mistake was made, admit it, or if you stand behind your decisions, then say so. I personally don’t care for the ad, nor to Target’s policy of not working with traditional media, and was particularly surprised that a company which prides itself for its support of community development is refusing to engage in an open dialogue about how they’re reaching their audience. As long as they’re considering what constitutes nontraditional media, perhaps they should take a closer look at what constitutes corporate responsibility.