NETIZENS are of two minds about publishing the Starr Report on the Internet. It was a defining moment for the medium when Americans rushed to read what $40 million of their tax money had bought. Starr Report has
Net effectPaul Clerkin of Nua Ltd., an Irish Internet consultant and developer, says his first reaction was pride. After all, the Net stood up to a tidal wave of traffic without crashing, 20 million Americans found information online that they could not have seen as readily anyplace else and the U.S. Congress had chosen to disseminate online one of the most controversial documents in the republic's history.
(By now, starbulletin.com readers expect to find news-making documents online. The paper's Internet edition has included the full text of controversial court decisions such as the one in the same-sex marriage case, the Broken Trust essay, the Bishop Estate Master's reports and other pivotal public documents.)
After some reflection, however, Clerkin's pride turned to resentment. "It seems that the very same legislators who in the past have become very animated about 'immoral' and 'indecent' content published on the Net," he says, "have been the first to use the Net to expose the private life (read sex life) of one of the world's most powerful men. Perhaps they are still not able to think of the Internet without thinking 'sexual perversion.'
"If publishing the report is anything other than an attempt to humiliate the leader of the U.S., and effectively the leader of the Western World, I'll eat my socks."
See our "Specials" page for
some of the documents mentioned here.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
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