The internet empowers people well beyond what they have been used to for decades. Information, analysis and views flood in, and individuals are able to make themselves heard all across the cyber world. However, this freedom of access has its dangers. Gulf News recently received an unsolicited article, apparently of interest since it was a reasoned attack on the strong influence of Israel on American foreign policy. It was only after looking into the origins of the article, that it become clear that it was from a former Ku Klux Klan member, who remains an active sympathiser of that organisation's racist aims. It would not have been in keeping with this newspaper's stance against racism to have taken a view from such a source.
Freedom of information imposes an obligation on the users of information to be careful, and to recognise that the internet allows people to deal directly with views which can be abhorrent, duplicitous, or wrong. A responsible response to such pushers of thinking that goes against the accepted norms of society is the need of the times we live in today.
