CENSORING WHAT JOURNALISTS READ…
June 20th, 2006[Update -- 1209, 21 June -- The New York Times adds its two-cents.]
If you’re a parent and you don’t want your children chatting with strangers, or a business and you don’t want your employees wasting company time surfing porn sites, you install nannyware. But if you’re a news organization, do you want to censor what may be valuable resources from your news gatherers?
If you’re the Los Angeles Times, the answer is yes.
Reporters working in the L.A . Times have informed me that Internet access in their newsrooms is filtered, although we haven’t determined what program they’re using. In the L.A. bureau, reporters can’t access sites like Playboy.com and are also blocked from accessing Peacefire.org, and I had to give a reporter the address of a Circumventor site so that he could get to our home page. In the San Francisco bureau, the filtering is apparently less restrictive, since Peacefire.org and Playboy.com are accessible, but the more hard-core Penthouse.com is not.
I think that all nannyware is a bad idea because it abdicates responsibility. If you’re a parent, put the computer in a common space where anyone walking by can easily see what’s on the screen. If you’re a business, simply tell employees that theft of company time and resources will not be tolerated and that web surfing not directly related to work is theft. Fire one or two employees for stealing and the others will get the idea.
These programs are notoriously unreliable. Have Coffee Will Write was iagoed by SonicWall for violence/hate/racism and by CyberPatrol for hate speech. I find the idea that a major news organization feels it must prevent its reporters from surfing inappropriate websites appalling.
I thought reporters and journalists had standards.
My Soundtrack: Cotton Wool by Lamb on WOXY.
Jeff – if your daughter had had a bout with anorexia and was checking websites for how to hide starving herself, what would you do? I have to tell you, I believe that there are some circumstances in which filters for kids are acceptable. That said, however, a kid or an adults for that matter who wants to find out that kind of info, can probably find a way to get to it if their issues are not otherwise being addressed.
Shalom Jill,
My point is that nannyware should never be the first line of defense.
In working with my students, what I’ve found is that not only is the nannyware the first line of defense, it’s the only line of defense.
When a student has an unsupervised Internet connection, no software is going to stop them for getting to where the want to be. I’ve had 6th and 7th graders laugh at programs like CyberPatrol and show me how with a few quick clicks how to get around the blocks.
Just as programs like DARE do a horrible job of stopping drug use, and Virginity Pledges only increase the transmission of STD’s, depending upon nannyware to protect your children on the Internet is laughable at best and criminal at worst.
The only way to keep children relatively safe is through the constant and involved presence of parents in the lives of their children.
If parents find that their lifestyle makes that difficult then they need to change their lifestyle.
B’shalom,
Jeff
Agreed.
[...] I have no quarrel with the state government asking, even requiring, employees to stay off the web for anything that isn’t work related. But I tend to agree with Jeff at Have Coffee Will Write about nannyware: I think that all nannyware is a bad idea because it abdicates responsibility. If you’re a parent, put the computer in a common space where anyone walking by can easily see what’s on the screen. If you’re a business, simply tell employees that theft of company time and resources will not be tolerated and that web surfing not directly related to work is theft. Fire one or two employees for stealing and the others will get the idea. [...]