E-book, free download in copyleft:
http://download.repubblica.it/pdf/2008/manuale_rsf.pdf

Bloggers cause anxiety. Governments are wary of these men and women, who
are posting news, without being professional journalists. Worse, bloggers
sometimes raise sensitive issues which the media, now known as "traditional",
do not dare cover. Blogs have in some countries become a source of news in their
own right.
Nearly 120,000 blogs are created every day. Certainly the blogosphere is not just
adorned by gems of courage and truth. It is also often the source of confusion and disinformation
and not all bloggers have the souls of reporters. That is why this handbook
contains advice on creating and updating a blog, with no other ambition than that of free
expression. For others it will be a struggle to draw attention to a particular issue. The first
concern therefore is to make a publication visible (see the Jotman article). This handbook
also suggests ploys to get your blog well referenced online (see the Olivier
Andrieu article) as well as "editorial" recommendations (Get your blog to stand out, by
Mark Glazer).
Let's acknowledge that blogs are a fantastic tool for freedom of expression. They have
unloosed the tongues of ordinary citizens. People who were until now only consumers
of news have become players in a new form of journalism, a "grassroots" journalism, as
expressed by Dan Gillmor (Grassroots journalism — see the chapter What ethics should
bloggers have?), that is "by the people for the people".
Blogs are more or less controllable for those who want to keep them under surveillance.
Governments that are most up to do date with new technology use the most sophisticated
filtering or blocking techniques, preventing them from appearing on the Web at
all. But bloggers don't just sit back and let it happen. The essential question becomes
how to blog in complete safety. With a normal IP address, a blogger can be tracked
down and arrested. Anonymity allows them to keep their freedom (See "How to blog
anonymously).
In countries where censorship holds sway, blogs are sometimes the only source of
news. During the events in Burma in the autumn of 2007, pitting monks and the people
against the military junta, bloggers were the main source of news for foreign jour-
INTRODUCTION
BLOGGERS,
A NEW SOURCE OF
NEWS
By Clothilde Le Coz
B
6 I REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS
nalists. Their video footage made it possible to gauge the scale of the protests and what
demonstrators' demands were. For more than two months, marches were held in the
streets, then a massive crackdown was launched against opponents that only the
Burmese were able to show, so hard did it become for the few foreign journalists who
managed to enter the country to get back out with their footage. And bloggers could
not get the footage out without getting round online censorship imposed by the government.
This handbook seeks to help every blogger to fill in the "black holes" In news.
The second part is devoted to techniques which can thwart filtering technology (Choose
your method to get round censorship by Nart Villeneuve). With a little good sense and
persistence and above all finding the technique best suited to the situation, every blogger
should be capable of shaking off censorship.
Clothilde Le Coz
Head of the Internet Freedom desk