"Why Ferguson’s About Net Neutrality, Too"

[Uncle Joe]

http://billmoyers.com/2014/08/21/fergusons-about-net-neutrality-too/

At the end of the classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Jimmy Stewart, as Senator Jefferson Smith, is in the midst of his filibuster against the corruption of the political machine that sent him to Capitol Hill as their lackey. Now he knows the truth and he’s taken over the floor of the Senate to tell it.

The nation is enthralled by his one man stand, but no one back in his home state is hearing the story: the machine controls all the newspapers and radio stations and even when the kids in Smith’s youth group print out a special edition of their own paper to try to tell his side, they’re run down by Boss Taylor’s goons.

Ultimately, Jimmy Stewart triumphs, of course, thanks to some handy, Hollywood-style deus ex machina, but just imagine if Jeff Smith and those kids had mobile phones, the Internet, Twitter and Facebook. Okay, maybe it wouldn’t have made for movie magic, but look at the power of today’s social media in the hands both of journalists committed to truth-telling and everyday citizens fighting back against injustice. And think of the loss to democracy if that ability to access a free and open Internet is taken away.

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The tragedy and ensuing crisis in Ferguson, Missouri, have shown the ability of social media to get the story told. David Carr wrote in The New York Times that, “Twitter has become an early warning service for news organizations, a way to see into stories even when they don’t have significant reporting assets on the ground. And in a situation hostile to traditional reporting, the crowdsourced, phone-enabled network of information that Twitter provides has proved invaluable.”

Also contemplating the situation in Ferguson, Zeynep Tufekci, a fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy noted, “It seems like a world ago in which such places, and such incidents, would be buried in silence, though, of course, residents knew of their own ignored plight. Now, we expect documentation, live-feeds, streaming video, real time Tweets.”

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More on the link.