Blogs as reliable as mainstream media says Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

Interesting news from the ACCC who say that Consumers consider blogs as reliable and as influential as mainstream media.

Sounds like call to action for online reputation monitoring Its also interesting to consider how the ACCC see’s its role in new media. Will they try to control and censor australian bloggers and online review sites.

“CONSUMERS who get their news from the internet are likely to trust a blog for reliability as much as a mainstream media site, the competition watchdog said today.

“For a growing base of users, these are all equally valid sources of news, information, entertainment and gossip, and users are not necessarily discriminating between traditional and new sources.”"

“For regulators like the ACCC, it means ensuring regulation relied on during the last century does not become an irrelevant fallback position that fails to serve the public’s best interests,” he said”.

This is very cool but also scary, what has made the internet great is its total freedom. Will that be eroded by Australian governments and what can we do to ensure that bloggers cannot be held legally liable if they critisise an Australian Company online.

Source: Courier Mail