Substantive Speaking

Or How substance will catch up to your speech and bite it really, really hard.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld both used the same speech tactic for similar situations. In Rumsfeld’s situation it was the expose of photos at AbuGraihb prison. With Gonzales it was the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys allegedly to make way for more politically loyal servants.

Essentially they both said that they were upset about the situation and were going to get to the bottom of it and find out what happened.

Some people would be glad to hear that Secretary Rumsfeld was upset about the treatment of prisoners, and that Attorney General Gonzales was upset about the U.S. Attorneys getting fired. But evidence and other statements preceding and following the event in question reflect more substance about what they said that they would appreciate.

That Rumsfeld and Gonzales were only upset about getting caught. They would have gotten away with it too, had it not been for the Internet. They forgot to include the New Media in their calculations. They were counting on the very short life span of their exposed foibles in an old machine of mass media.

Newspapers only have space to report on the basic overall position, and television has very little time to risk repeating speeches before the viewer changes the channel.

Newspapers get buried by the following day’s newspapers, and television video segments get taped over or forgotten by viewers, but he Internet collects and holds information for years, and we can go back and search for everything we need.

They, and others like them, are catching on. They are beginning to figure out how dangerous the Internet is for them, and they are quietly working behind the scenes to rein in public access to the Internet by making it more expensive and more difficult for the public to gain access.

The PBS Series Frontline recently created a miniseries called “The News Wars” nearly a decade after they created a miniseries called “Why America Hates the Press” Frontline producers analyze the state of the American news media and provide insight into changes that can impact the behavior of not only politicians, but corporate owners of mass media outlets, and the owners of the pipelines and cables that carry the Internet.

The danger to the Internet is only exasperated by old mass media shows that talk about it, like Frontline, and cable news networks that regularly produce news segments about the Internet.

Corporations are attempting to gain control of what goes on the Internet, and we must all work together to keep it free of such control and accessible to all. http://www.savetheinternet.com