Internet freedoms demand respect, responsibility.
(EUGENE, Ore.) - Our Founders did not place the content of that famed First Amendment where it leads our Constitution without probing/exploring dialog and fully-detailed, determined cogitation reflecting fact and philosophy.
The Federalist Papers make that exceedingly clear in both precise comment and continuing general detail. Now, opening our 21st Century, easy-access and ubiquitous channel-usage for more millions than ever before has arrived via the Internet.
Never before have millions been offered such an open ticket to share-and-learn about sensitive, often painful, always complex problems/issues/policies and potential action by government and ourselves.
One thoroughly foreseeable consequence is that we now find ourselves “blessed” (!?!) with far too-facile, easier, more rapid --and too often less thoughtful-- citizen/response than even the Founders might find it possible to appreciate. That’s inevitable when millions share “meaningful communications” (!??!) at so many levels, in so many ways, about multiple and still-multiplying common interests. As with every new-and-intriguing toy, widespread reaction --especially by “many ostensibly mature adults too thoroughly feelings-fed rather than cogitatively triggered”-- has been fantastic in many more ways than might first appear.
“Top-of-head”, often too-rapid response to any of many provocative newsletters or proliferating blogs content presentations has become one of the most threatening current “dark/cloud conditions” hovering over our still-precious First Amendment-protected freedoms.
But no comment-participant should ever forget the public forum, worldwide in delivery, to which every comment-made inevitably --and instantaneously- is delivered. For responsibles that presents no difficulty except due care surely and most obviously demanded. YOU are responsible, fully accountable for all you write and publish on these intriguing channels.
If you cannot feel comfortable signing your stuff openly and without equivocation via anonymity or pseudo-name, better NOT fire it off. Additionally, it has become painfully obvious that many maligh-intended “special interests” have already fully invaded this very vulnerable and wide-open public channel-set. (We’ve captured and silenced a few right here on S-N.)
The unprecedented proliferation of Internet-based channels provides simple and rapid access-routes right into the hearts of millions of American homes --with more becoming vulnerable each and every day.
Easy anonymity and pseudo-name signature on any comment can provide all-too-easy means to avoid the essential responsibility and accountability we have the right to demand from every communicator. In fact, given the essential ease for hiding motive and managing manipulation now via Internet contact, that essential and very socially-responsible component for every communication is more truly-demanded than ever before.
The first and paramount rule for evaluating every communication is very simple: KNOW THE SOURCE !! Any responsible source will present full ID and details re any communication, on polite request.
It is well-established professional communications principle that if such information is NOT rapidly supplied, there MUST be a reason for continued covert concealment of too-revealing information destroying desired effect and impact originally sought.
Millions respond daily to the essential American open channel of “Letters to the Editor”, long offered by the American press as the simplest and most effective sharing/learning channel providable to wide participation from every reader.
But access to that famed and world-appreciated American device has almost always been with demand for full identification of the letter-writer --simple legal protection for both publisher and other readers. By now it has become very painfully obvious that there are some ostensible free-speech advocates who are willing to make wild, radical, unfounded and entirely undocumented statements.
Most often they do so simply to satisfy their own peculiar psychological pleasures in perturbing others -- while enjoying the apparent safety of anonymity or pseudo-name/ID for their comments. One sure tip-off is their often-advanced claim of “fear of retaliation” -- surely back-handed admission of something fearfully wrong with what they offer.
There are still others --some paid by many private dollar-gain special interests-- to carry on similar hidden-attack by the same means, for the peculiar advantages which may proceed from such action., Most will contend they are “only intensely interested” in their own particular topic. But that chimera is completely evaporated by their tone-and-content of comment, pursued persistently to the point of distraction, as well as detraction of other participants.
They either do not realize --or “do not care a tinker’s damn!”-- about overall damage to reader interest, to wasted attention and to the integrity of both the comment process and the channel directly affected. They seem oblivious to the ease with which their comments can be traced and their location and full identification obtained. That comparatively new process, in place already on many such channels, is just now beginning to be applied.
Its use is demanded by the growing urgent insistence of many others, not only annoyed but deeply frustrated and angered by those who will so act, while knowing they are indelibly damaging this now-essential and necessarily shared human communications resource. Its newly-recognized special importance for citizen civic responsibility participation and full understanding of issues, problems and demanded action means nothing to those who will --as they have for years-- abuse the privilege of free speech for base political and social pandering. (Easily identifiable by content and feeling/tone, as well as intensity and repetition, while often ignoring attention to subject or issue.)
Under due study and preparation for some time now by appropriate governmental agencies, the application process is deemed necessary for solid protection against possible terrorist attack via internet channels. The same techniques can be applied by channel operators seeking more sensitive and appropriate usage of expensive technology they definitely do not want to see abused and abandoned by both readers and the advertisers who pay the relatively large costs involved. That’s far too costly not only in dollars now, but in entrepreneurism built on rapid further developments already on the way. With that development now ready and known to many channel operators, you can expect the simple, easy next-step to obviate the need for widespread application, at some cost in dollars and staff effort.
That is, of course, the tried/true and totally UNthreatening resort to simple “one/time first/shot signup’ --something some channels managed by more foresighted operators have already put into place.
Precisely as for Letters to the Editor and similar free-speech applications in “old-fashioned” print, the new-fashioned internet --gleefully noted by some irresponsible for its non-managed if not totally unmanageable nature-- is now facing the same natural dilemma as did print when letter-writing first became a multi-million-user channel early on --and a problem for wise editors and managers of that time.
Given good faith usage of either “the Letters page” in print and the comment-space via Internet/channel, there is no practical defense for refusing to identify yourself when seeking the privilege accorded every user by those paying the technical and management costs for that channel. You are a welcomed guest --and thus expected to assume the same social/cultural/ethical behavior as anyone else in the same relation to a host whose home one is visiting.
Were you NOT brought up that way ??!! That simple fact-of-life is demonstrated by even the most rule-free channels, now sure to require at least a minimum of control over personal comment behavior --see for yourself in the most-used open channels on the entire internet. (OR check the latest reports and books; see Reader’s Note.)
Fortunately, many thousands of the most prolific constant-commenters on the many thousands of open channels we now find available are already becoming well aware of long-used, simple socially-acceptable usage patterns. Those are at very slight cost for their continuing and multiplying usage of those channels.
They are already, by their own sensitivity and demonstrated good will for others, making sure that they operate precisely as in any ordinary conversation with others, conducted face-to-face --and surely, as in that so-often-encountered situation, clearly including easy and open honest ID.
It has become a telling and revealing point on many channels now to discount, deny and delay, in any way possible, whatever is offered by those who insist on operating as unknown-and-unidentifiable -- on the solid social sense of knowing to whom one talks and listens.
Would you welcome warmly into your home a masked man (or woman) who then refuses to remove that mask and provide the practical propriety of personal identification, per proper behavior in any civilized society? Owner/managers must consider their sites in precisely that same way. “The times they are 'a changing" is a solid old truism extremely hard to deny in this opening era of the 21st Century.
Acceptable behavior on the burgeoning Internet is now changing, unmistakably and by insistent, rising demand among its most creative, thus provocative and intriguing participants.
Surely we and our internet channels have by now reached the point when we can demand abandonment of the childish, deliberate and extremely damaging roleplaying/ psychological/social games which have for too long plagued this greatly valuable tool for thoughtful citizen participation.
Many thousands of users have come to realize that trustworthy civil interchange must depend on knowing both the source and the revealing sense of those with whom we exchange our most essential currency -- our thoughts, values, beliefs and decisions.
To allow such free exchange untrammeled and unprotected is to make ourselves far too vulnerable in this day and age, starting a new century where both rational/reasonable dialog and skillfully persuasive, sometimes malign, manipulation clearly contend for personal and public attention.
To share and learn, we must communicate. We can truly, openly, honestly and effectively do so only when we know and trust the others with whom we thus relate in the complexities of modern life. Think, and think again, before you unleash any too-unfettered comment in internet-public channels reaching inexorably across the entire world.
If you cannot sign an honest identifying name, open to further full detail supporting your comment, re-think what you were about to commit for the whole world to see, NOW or LATER, inevitably on the open public record.
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Reader’s Note: Far too many references and relevant experiences over fifty working years as writer/consultant in both communications and education are deeply involved here for easy listing.
One major current reference used is: (lower-case on book jacket) “say everything”: How blogging began, What it’s becoming, and Why it matters”. Scott Rosenberg; Crown, 2009. ISBN: 978-0-307-45136-1 Quotes are excerpted, combined and consolidated; verbatim form and sources on request.
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At 21, Henry Clay Ruark was Aroostook Editor for the Bangor, Maine DAILY NEWS, covering the upper 1/4 of the state. In the ‘40s, he was Staff Correspondent, then New England Wires Editor at United Press-Boston; later Editor for the Burlington, Vermont 3-daily group owned by Wm. Loeb, later notorious at Manchester, New Hampshire UNION LEADER for attacks on Democratic Presidential candidates.
Hank returned to Oregon to complete M. Ed. degree at OSU, went on to Indiana University for Ed.D. (abd) and special other course-work; was selected as first Information Director for NAVA in Washington, D.C.; helped write sections of NDEA, first Act to supply math, science, foreign language consultants to state depts. of education; joined Oregon Dept. of Education, where he served as NDEA administrator/Learning Media Consultant for ten years.
He joined Dr. Amo DeBernardis at PCC, helping establish, extend programs, facilities, Oregon/national public relations; moved to Chicago as Editor/Publisher of oldest educational-AV journal, reformed as AV GUIDE Magazine; then established and operated Learning Media Associates as general communications consultant group. Due to wife’s illness, he returned to Oregon in 1981, semi-retired, and has continued writing intermittently ever since, joining S-N in 2004. His Op Eds now total over 560 written since then.
Op Ed: Insightful Comments Reflecting Growing Citizen InvolvementSalem-News.com