Book Review: Environmental Risks and the Media
Abstract
the flow of information very hard to control. Of course, this has benefits in the case of violations of human rights but is detrimental in cases of pornography and child abuse. In the field of ethics (chapter 5), the internet also raises new concerns. The speed of growth of the internet and the dominance of commercial interests, for example, put pressure on the quality of reporting. How long can you go on checking your story when the competition is on the brink of releasing the story on the internet? Or how long do you keep a good story on a page that is hardly visited and advertisers are already complaining? While he pays some attention to the freedom of expression and its limitations, Herbert does so in the classical manner, not fully exploring the new and important questions that the internet raises for freedom of expression. For example, in the USA, websites promoting propaganda for Nazi ideas and selling Nazi symbols are protected by law. In Europe, on the contrary, the expression of such ideas is not pro- tected by law. This is an area of internet usage which raises issues about international arrangements and limits of censorship,