George Orwell wrote in his book 1984, published in 1949: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” Consider this from 70 years ago. “Suddenly there sprang into his mind, ready-made as it were, the image of a certain Comrade Ogilvy, who had recently died in battle, in heroic circumstances…. It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Ogilvy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence.” Orwell was clearly describing the Internet in 2021.
Government stifling the freedom of the press has taken a different turn in the 21st century because of the Internet. You can talk about journalists and editors either feeling or actually being threatened by the government and it is a valid complaint.
Today, only 13 percent of US adults get their news from print copies and 37 percent from online sources. Television accounts for 41 percent, but that is in answer to the question “Where do you prefer to get your ‘local’ news?”
The days of government raiding a newspaper office or destroying the presses only happens under infrequent cases, as when Hong Kong police shut down Apple Daily. Today, control the Internet to control the past, present, and future. Further, as the saying goes, if it is not on the Internet, it does not exist.
Online or print, the average person would probably say that press freedom would allow someone to say almost anything as long as it did not include spurious innuendo, things taken out of context, and outright lies. President Benigno Aquino III, by the efforts of Sen. “Tito” Sotto, signed into law the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012.
“Freedom On The Net 2020” survey by the Freedom House lists the Philippines as “Partly Free.” However, the analysis leads with the non-renewal of the ABS-CBN franchise, which has nothing directly to do with the Internet. The Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 “could be used to prosecute online speech.” Further, the Philippines gets a low score on “quality of Internet connections” and “beyond the reach of certain segments of the population.”
But for “Does the government exercise technical or legal control over Internet infrastructure for the purposes of restricting connectivity?” the score is high. “Does the state block or filter, or compel service providers to block or filter, Internet content?” The answer is NO.
If a government genuinely wants to restrict the freedom of speech, press, and communication, all it has to do is follow the lead of China, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, most of the Arab Middle East, and, of course, Cuba.
A week ago, as the anti-government protests built momentum, the Cuban government killed the Internet. “There was no formal organizer of Sunday’s protests; people found out about the rallying points over social media, mostly on Twitter and Facebook. Protesters and pro-government activists alike wielded smartphones to capture images and send them to relatives and friends or post them online.”
The country was “basically offline” until 2008, then gradually came on-line in December 2018 when Cubans got access to mobile Internet for the first time via data plans purchased from the state telecom monopoly. These days, more than half of all Cubans have Internet access.
With the government shutting down the Internet, the only reliable news is coming from relatives in the US through limited cell phone messages. If the Cuban protests are not on the Internet, they do not exist.