So you want to learn more about Serbia, Scientology, Islamic fundamentalism, Jorg Haider's Freedom Party, UFOs or whatever. The good news is the truth is out there, somewhere in wwwland. The bad news is that you have to wade through an awful lot of muck - from deliberate mis-information to rabid conspiracy theorising - to get to it.
William Blake wrote: "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Save for the fact that he penned this pithy phrase 200 years ago, he could well have been talking about the Internet. It may be a trudge to get to what you want, but there is no denying that the Web has democratised access to information.
Even as recently as the early 1990s, our newspapers, radio and TV stations controlled the news we heard. If the traditional media decided not to cover a particular story, for reasons that varied from financial or political expediency to fear and greed, then there was virtually no chance of the public getting to hear about it.
Those days have gone for good. Developments in technology mean that anyone with a computer and a phoneline can send their message to the world.
The upside of all of this is, of course, endless options on where to get information on almost any topic. The downside is exactly the same.
There are very few filters on what can appear on the Web, so, for instance, an organ of hate such as the Ku Klux Klan's site is just as accessible as thehungersite.com which sends food-aid to the developing world.
This creates a challenge for Web news services offering links to other sites to better illustrate a story. Patrick Logue, Breaking News editor at ireland.com, The Irish Times website, is regularly faced with this situation: "If a story we are running contains links to external material, we have to ensure that all relevant sites are presented to ensure the report is as balanced as possible. For example, with an Irish political story we'd link to all the major parties.
"We check sites before linking to them. At the same time, we have a disclaimer saying that we are not responsible for the content on them. It's a vital part of Web publishing to provide links to users which are relevant to the subject matter," says Logue.
It has often been written in the past that the first casualty of war is the truth. This was certainly true in this country between 1939 and 1945 when, by Government decree, newspapers had to refer to the second world war as "The Emergency". They were also forbidden from reporting on the hundreds of people born in the Republic who died fighting for the British army. However, as a result of Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution as it was then written, newspapers were allowed to report Northern Irish-born casualties.
This would be both unthinkable and unfeasible today. Last year's Kosovo war was held to be the first Internet war, with both the Kosovo information centre, (www.kosova.com), and the Serbian information ministry (www.serbia-info.com), disseminating their point of view from well-maintained websites.
After the Recak massacre in January of last year, when dozens of Albanians were rounded up and executed by Serbian military police, the Kosovan site showed the world that it had really happened by putting up graphic images of murdered and decapitated victims. Eighteen months later, those pictures are still there (avoid that page unless you have a strong stomach).
On the Serbian site, meanwhile, we are told that everything is, in fact, all peace and light. "In Serbia, the rights and freedoms of national minorities are respected," it says. "Minorities in Serbia enjoy rights in accordance with the established international standards." It then goes on to explain that the trouble in Kosovo is down to the ethnic population explosion there. "The Albanian population has the highest birth rate in Europe."
As for Northern Ireland, with the marching season approaching its high point, it is instructive to take a look at the sites of the Orange Order (www.orangenet.org) and the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, (www.garvaghyroad.org).
The main section of the Orange Order's site occupies itself with such innocuousness as laying claim on St Patrick: "In contrast to the Roman Catholic tradition, Protestants celebrate Patrick not as a person to pray to, but rather as one whose faith bears many of the hallmarks of the Protestant Faith." Its Drumcree section is styled as "civil rights" and extensively quotes Martin Luther King by way of explanation of their right to march along "the Queen's highway".
The Garvaghy Road site is far less slick in design but quotes many of the same "facts" as the Orange site, though for the opposite purpose. It quotes an Irish News editorial and uses graphic pictures to illustrate its side of the story.
The Islamic fundamentalist Taleban government of Afghanistan, while not enamoured of many aspects of the Western world, nevertheless has its views represented on the Web from a site maintained in New York (www.taleban.com). Amid pictures of what looks to be a very beautiful country, it seeks to right the wrongs done to the movement by the international media. Along the way, it trumpets the great improvements in education standards there, particularly among women.
The United Nations site (www.un.org), however, tells quite a different story. The latest figures it has shows that 85 per cent of Afghan women are illiterate and that only 22 per cent of females and 49 per cent of males are enrolled in schools.
You can find information on almost anything on the Web, but you'll also generally find another site saying just the opposite. Be careful, it really is a jungle out there.
This and other articles on this page are on The Irish Times website at www.ireland.com
See also:
US investigative journalism: www.americandispatches.com
International Consortium of In- vestigative Journalists: www.icij.org
International campaigning: www.oneworld.org
Comprehensive list of news links: www.news2.com
