News and Information Agencies (NIA)

The NIAs of Authorities in nearly every country in the world generate 24/7 news and information holocoms that are the only means by which their citizens may officially learn about their world. All other holocoms, whether sent by individuals or organizations, are so thoroughly altered by Authority AI censors that the only news and infomation they contain is identical to what is produced by NIAs.

Thus, the only real alternative sources of news and information in today's world are "Actual Conversations" between people willing to risk being charged with a criminal act, should those conversations be picked up by surve-cams and judged to be subversive.

This situation of "sole source" news and information was not always the case. Up until the late 20th century, there were tens of thousands of small independent paper-presses and audio stations in the world, which published and broadcasted a wide variety of news, information, and entertainment. These media companies were known collectively as "the free press," and could be found in every non-totalitarian country in the world. Despite the great variety of content among these independent media outlets, however, closer examination within each country and era revealed considerable ideological congruity among these media producers and between them and the Authorities. Very few media outlets strongly challenged the status quo of a particular time and place.

With the advent of video-broadcasting, there began a vast consolidation of the media so that by 2010, the "press" consisted largely of Authority controlled media outlets and a few large closely allied media corporations. While many people continued to turn to these media outlets for their entertainment, fewer and fewer relied on them for news and information, which they regarded as being largely propaganda and disinformation. Instead, most people sought their news and information from the Net (2-D precursor to the holosphere), where thousands of independent websites, blogs, RSS, and other communication modalities were available to them.

The Authorities quickly countered this trend in two ways:
(1) The Authorities and their Media Oligarchy allies created their own websites, blogs, RSS, etc., many disguised as the work of independent producers. Thus, ordinary citizens found it increasingly difficult to distinguish between truly independent reporting of news and information and that coming from Authority proxies.
(2) The Authorities simultaneously carried out a highly effective public relations campaign to discredit the web and the blogosphere as anarchistic and totally unreliable, which had, to some extent become the case, partially as a result of the efforts of the Authorities and their proxies to flood the blogosphere with propaganda, as described above. (See, for example, an article that appeared in the Authority media ally, The New York Times, describing deliberate disinformation in the Wikipedia.)

This period, between 2010 and 2020, is often known as the "no nothing" era, as it was almost impossible for anyone to determine what was actually happening in the world. With the Authorities and their media allies (often in the guise of independent sources) putting out their version of the facts, and every truly independent source putting out their own versions, how was anyone to know what the truth was?

This chaotic situation came to an end around 2020, as Authorities in nearly every country in the world took direct control of and/or strictly censored all quasi-independent media outlets, and passed draconian censorship laws controlling all truly independent communication of news and information.