yelvington.com

At the risk of once again being told that I hate America, I'm compelled to cite Neil McIntosh's observation that the United States has an ugly characteristic in common with a certain African country: "Were I to take up reporting again and do my thing from Web 2.0 in San Francisco next week, I too could be locked up and thrown out the country - just like reporters from Zimbabwe whose fate she [Mindy McAdams] highlights on her blog. A freelance working for the Guardian suffered this fate a few years back, and I know journalists fall foul of this reasonably regularly. Long weekends in New York get a whole bunch harder after that, I’ll warrant."

It is one thing to have a constitution that protects freedom of speech and of the press, and quite another thing to practice it. But human rights are human rights, not merely citizen rights, or the rights of corporate media, or the privileges of the licensed few.

I'm in Paris at the conference "New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension," organized by the World Press Freedom Committee at UNESCO headquarters. It's been a humbling experience to be on stage with people talking about real barriers to Web publishing: government repression, censorship, arrests and outright poverty. And here I am discussing our interactive community efforts in a couple of cushy upscale suburban markets in the United States. Nevertheless, the audience seemed genuinely engaged and there was quite a line of people wanting to exchange cards and ask questions afterward.