By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

THE Bush Administration reportedly sought to kill the ABC 20/20 story, which was supposed to expose Vice President Dick Cheney as among the clients who had engaged the services of the escort firm run by the controversial D.C. Madam, Deborah Jeane Palfrey.
Caving to intense political pressure from the White House, ABC scaled down the number of Palfrey’s VIP clients. According to WMR, ABC’s chief investigative reporter, Brian Ross, saw his story spiked by senior ABC News executives under pressure from Disney Chairman George Mitchell and CEO Bob Iger, as well as White House officials, including Karl Rove.
The White House saw to it that ABC/Disney killed the DC Madam’s story before yet another scandal swamped the Bush administration.
There are many ways to silence journalists. Intimidation is one. A threat of libel suit is another. In third world countries, one can kill a story by either bribing the reporter or killing them, literally.
In the Matrix era, however, there’s almost no point in attempting to censor the mainstream media, whose power is shared by millions of Internet and cell-phone users, whose own powers, incidentally, are beyond censorship. The mind-boggling technology has distributed the power of information so extensively that it is impossible for any government to hide anything or for the public to not know anything.
China’s repeated attempts at cracking down online activism have been futile considering that the Internet — along with its sister technologies — has developed a life on its own, within an unfathomable cyber community that no government can control.
The mainstream papers and TV networks share readership and viewership with their online counterparts. Regular newspaper columnists now compete with private bloggers, who enjoy the luxury — or face the danger — of writing without the inhibitions imposed by the Code of Journalism.
The mainstream media are facing potential competition with practically anyone who has access to technology. Consider the gory details of Hussein’s execution, which didn’t make it in the regular evening news, but became readily consumable to the international community via the cell-phone video that splattered all over the Internet.
Still another regular cellphone user scooped professional cameramen of networks by capturing the tragic shooting last month at Virginia Tech.
The Bush Administration may have succeeded in killing the ABC story, but it underestimated the power of the Internet’s whistle-blowing Web sites.
George Orwell wasn’t exactly the most prescient futurologist. In Nineteen Eight-Four (published in 1949), Orwell prophesized the government’s use of technology and other Big Brother mechanism to control people’s thoughts and actions. Five decades later, it would turn out that the people would use the very same terrifying technology to curb the government’s attempt at controlling them.
(Send feedback to marvic@mvguam)