<p>The magazine Time formally acknowledged the trend by making ‘You’, the information-age user, the Person of the Year, for “seizing the reins of the global media, and for framing the new digital democracy and for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game”. Global networks in America were forced to stand up and take notice when home-made videos posted on YouTube.com snapped up more eyeballs than any of their prime time shows. And, writing in the New York Times Review of Books, Richard Posner described blogs (online diaries) as the “gravest challenge to the journalistic establishment”. America is grappling with the ethical contradictions of the New Media: it was a blog writer who first exposed US Congressman Mark Foley’s sexual abuse of young boys, but there are as many, if not more, examples of online writers who get it wrong, and get away with it, because they are accountable to no one.</p>
<p>We have already seen some media blog writers crouch like cowards behind fictional names and identities, just so that they are able to lash out at people who they wouldn’t have the guts to criticise to their face. On many of these sites, salacious gossip and sexual innuendo have been dressed up as journalism. The personal lives, real and imagined, of colleagues are now being dragged on to the comments section of these sites. And the worst part — it’s all being defended in the lofty name of free speech.</p>
<p>Should there be censorship on bloggers?</p>