We all know that the press covers activists, hackers and hacktivists very poorly. Activists are portrayed as violent political extremists with no sense, and hackers are confused with crackers, and thus called computer criminals. I was thinking recently... why might this be? I've been emailing a columnist from the UK newspaper The Independent, and what I realised from these emails is that the columnists in the media are simply out of touch with the new form of activism (it used to all be through parties and unions, now it's decentralised and chaotic), and with most other political issues that affect the younger generations. So I decided to try and do something about it, and I need everybody to sign my petition to help solve (in part) this problem with the press.

I am going to write letters to the UK's major newspapers, starting with the more reasonable newspapers, The Guardian and The Independent, asking that they introduce a new column for "youth politics", which can include any youth issue of a more political nature (as opposed to the clubbing scene!). This column should be written by a group of people like ourselves who can cover different issues (its explained more on the petition web page). I will write to the editors of the newspapers, and send them a link to a petition which I have created to back my case up. So if everybody could sign the petition (it'd be especially good if I can get respected journalists like Naomi Klein to sign it) then I might get a little further than the editors' trash cans!

The petition can be found at:
 http://www.state-embers.co.uk/petition.htm