"Let Truth and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter?" asked John Milton in Areopagitica, his rousing defence of a free press, in 1644. But in an era when a blog can be set up with a few clicks, not everyone agrees that more voices and more choices improve the quality of debate. Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, has argued that by allowing people to retreat into information cocoons or echo chambers in which they hear only views they agree with, the blogosphere fosters po-larisation-a fear widely shared by politicians. Forbes once called blogs the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.
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