There’s good news and bad news about new media. First the good news: The Internet, mobile phones, and other types of “new media” are making information sharing infinitely easier. For the first time in history, there is a global platform for free speech and the possibility of a truly free press. But you knew this.
The bad news is that freedom of the press is actually decreasing just about everywhere in the world! In a report released April 29, Freedom House — a watchdog group that monitors democratic issues around the globe — found that 
press freedom declined for the eighth consecutive year, and only one in six people live in countries with genuinely free media. And – as I learned from attending a conference on the topic last week sponsored by the Center for International Media Assistance – for the first time the number of bloggers in prison almost surpasses the number of traditional print and broadcast journalists.
It seems that the very success of the Internet and new media in spreading ideas is what has motivated repressive governments to 
increasingly restrict access to these tools, crack down on journalists, and crush a basic human right: freedom of speech.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has likened information networks to “the new nervous system for our planet.” Ultimately, she said, the issue “isn’t just about information freedom; it is about what kind of world we want and what kind of world we will inhabit.” Do we want to live, she said, in one global community with “a common body of knowledge that benefits and unites us all.” Or, Clinton said, do we want to live on “a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors.”
Does it send a chill up your spine, too, to think that just as a world of knowledge is opening, there are those who would impose a new “Dark Age”?
Yes. One way to combat the possible coming “dark age” is the continued outpouring of information coming from the e-mail, cell phones of the repressed people. In addition, the press of the relatively free countries need to continue toget the information out to the rest of the world. This won’t solve the problem but should keep the potential of “dark ages” to a mininum.
For the intellectuaI degeneration of people today, I would put all the blame on the media…they simply go by the way of the world and describe it as reality.It results in legitimizing everything that they report and describe.
During slave trade era, press gladly accepted advertisement for sale of the merchandise of slaves. Instead of offering any kind of intellectual guidance to mankind, a definite role of the media,they dutifully report all the rot!
I am a philosophic researcher on the subject for a decade.If Mr.Jane Morse wishes I would be glad to mail him my research articles on the subject.
google 昨天刚一宣布，google cn的连接转接，暂停，连中国国内的网络，更加受到限制，公平报道这一消息的网页网贴和消息全部被禁止。谩骂google的网页，消息和网题网贴，则畅通无阻……..。这就是讨好恶人所得到的回报？
自由internet 人。2010-7-1-
I welcome the freedom of the new media as such but I see the problem with unfiltered, misinforming hoaxes that are taken without any consideration and further investigation. I do not say we should restrict any media but at least we should build in a approved or justified button like the “like” button on Facebook. This would somehow prove that the source is reliable – there should be a body that allocates this approval thing. The good thing about the net that it is free but it is also uncensored and people rarely question credibility.