PhoneBoy Reviews: highersource.org

Some say art imitates life. Here's an example of art imitaing death. As you may remember, 39 members of a cult recently committed suicide in a fancy home
somwhere in San Diego, CA. Many of them worked for a company called Higher Source, which designs websites. A mere 24 hours after this mass suicide was
reported, the website "highersource.org" appeared on the scene.

On first glance, the website looks like it's making fun of the mass suicide of the cult members. But this is only skin deep. Digging into the site, there's really a serious
message about how the media has covered this event, particularlly since these people were using the Internet. They didn't like the general media coverage on this
event, so they took their message to the web.

Quoting from their website:

     The media spin on the suicide of religious cult members is, in a word, inexcusable. Television, radio and print media sources have reported this as if the cult
     did all their recruiting online and killed themselves by ingesting poison computer parts. The cult was around for 22 years, LONG before the web. They only
     recently began making some money making VERY bad web pages. I ask you, if they where garbage men would the story be focused on dumps and not the
     deaths? If they were construction workers, would they be discussing how vulnerable and lonely the average framer is?

     The crew at highersource.org is trying to accomplish one thing. To bring attention to the inaccuracies of the reporting about the Internet. Not only in the
     present farcical situation, but in all reporting of the net. Not everyone on the net is a pedophile or religious cult member. Millions of people use the Internet
     every day for their business, research and other legitimate reasons.

I have included one of their "Media Integrity NOW!" icons on phoneboy.com because I support their goal of bringing accuracy to media coverage about the
Internet, but I'd take it one step further and say that the media should more accurately cover all events, Internet-related or otherwise.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good laugh or you want to help the cause of proper media coverage of the Internet, check this website out!


Last Update: 18 July 1997
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