Sometimes, we progressives can get kind of down in the mouth about the power of media to overwhem intelligent, rational, discussion.
In the interest of optimism, I want to note a bright sign of media evolution towards more equitably distributed media power.
A few days ago, America learned that the Bush Administration has been secretly working with the database marketing firm BeNow to construct a gigantic collection of files containing highly personal information on all the high school students across the United States of America.
To make matters worse, it seems that BeNow was working to make this information accessible to the United States military. There has been heated speculation that this database could be part of a Bush Administration preparation for a military draft. Whatever is the case in that particular area of contention, the fact is that the mere existence of a military database containing information about the personal lives of American teenagers is abhorent to America’s traditional values of liberty and plainly unconstitutional, given the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches of citizens’ “papers”.
Our Irregular Times staff writers worked fast to gather information on the story and bring it to the attention of the American public. What’s happened as a result? A public relations nightmare for BeNow, among other things.
As of the time I write this article, a Google search for “benow” brings a searcher to the official web page of the BeNow company. But, just a few listings below, on the front page of Google, is the Irregular Times discussion thread on BeNow, which contains a link to one of our articles revealing the information about BeNow’s involvement in the tawdry effort to build a government program of surveillance on American underage kids.
Thanks to those Irregular Times articles on the attacks on liberty by Donald Rumsfeld’s Department of Defense and the BeNow database firm, the image of BeNow may be permanently tarnished. Any potential investor searching for information on BeNow will find the Irregular Times articles detailing the kind of nefarious activities that BeNow has been involved in. The intelligent investor will seriously consider whether BeNow is making itself legally vulnerable to a class action lawsuit on behalf of the parents of high school students across America. The intelligent investor, upon finding this information, will divest.
The fact is that Irregular Times is a very small operation. In our ranks of writers, we have exactly zero powerbrokers. We’re just ordinary Americans working hard to make ends meet and take control of our country back from the Republican power elites. Even though we are small, however, we can do our part to make a difference in calling to account those people and corporations who involve themselves in the criminal activities of the Bush Administration.
Here’s the best part: You can do the same thing. Through the grassroots democratic power of the Internet, we ALL have the power to speak truth to power. The media is now what we make of it.
