Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

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Strategies & Market Trends : Waiting for the big Kahuna -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Joan Osland Graffius who wrote (13222)	1/15/1998 9:50:00 AM
From: j g cordes	Respond to of 94695

Joan, sites like SI (.. and there are very few) offer a forum for candid discussion and contribution. The most defining difference between this and other sites is one of commercial intent. Barron's and the Wall Street Journal, the Street and others are selling their sponsorship, their services, their weekend paper and a variety of other products through your attendance. Here, you may not always get a non-commercial thought or dis-interested response, BUT this site offers the greatest freedom to express and to voice opinions. To further your question of ".. some parts of the media are threatened by the truth or individual intelligence since today there is very little investigative reporting and the talk shows are being replaced by internet sites like SI?" On a larger scale, there is a strong non-free speech trend coming from the corporate side of America which sponsors the idea that an advertiser by buying space in a magazine, internet site, or time on a network also has the right to determine content, editorial commentary and political persuasion. The other side of this blade are legal departments that actively seek out and intimidate sources of criticism of their companies. There are hired guns on the net who patrol for commentary that doesn't meet the glossy standards of the pr departments. Within a democratic society this is akin to holding the publisher hostage on the flimsy argument that money makes right... money is only another expression of class and privilege and does not grant any greater rights to commanding intellectual expression and free speech.