Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Bloggers vs. The BBC
Sandra writes "The BBC has an article about how chinese bloggers hate BBC interviews, as from their point of view all the Beeb cares about is censorship in China." From the article: "This being the internet, the conversation also involved various members of the community accusing each other of having ulterior business interests, being "trolls", or covertly blogging on behalf of the state. But overall, it looks as though mutual trust will be regained. And as well as the specific dynamics of talking about China, there's a new phenomenon here of what happens when bloggers are quoted. "
"Please BBC, stop highlighting our plight for freedom on the internet."
Hmmm I wonder who could possibly be behind this...
Let's see... industrial pollution, government corruption (which Chinese can protest, BTW, just not basic goverment policy), environmental impact of rapid industrialization, Chinese historical and cultural preservation, the recent toxic slick in Harbin. But that's just off the top of my head. I think the problem is that most British journalists are about as ignorant, incompetent and sensationalistic as their American counterparts.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
In slashdot, we talk about stuff that matters, like whether this electric toilet seat can run Linux, is the recent act of MS/SCO/Sony/RIAA/Google.... violates the privacy of the user... It is fine to about that here. I understand what you mean, concern and worries... But, if one day slashdot becomes so powerful that it runs a cable tech news network and start interviewing some random guy in the local mall about the same issue, you can expect they will answer huh!?! It does not really mean privacy, online security etc are unimportant. It just means a large segment of the society has no interest in this in their daily life.
The Chinese bloggers being interviewed by BBC must be feeling the same as the joe sixpack in the local mall being interviewed by CowboyNeal. First, if that guy is a political activist, he or she probably won't have time hang around blogging for unrelated stuff. The other bloggers probably has an interest of travel, career, music, movie and porn. Asking them topics about politics is kind of out of context.
Second, sometimes, the journalists tend to ask questions which has an information content of close to zero. For example, ask if you can freely express about your opinion freely about some banned groups. Okay there are three scenarios. 1) that person answers along the line of "I don't want to talk about this/ I have no interest about this". The reporter reads that the blogger cannot express his opinion freely. 2) that person says no. The reporter reads that the blogger is controlled by the state. 3) that person says yes. The reporter says "yeah. I know the censorship is everywhere"...
While we all know censorship still prevalent in China, conducting such kind of interview is kind of meaningless. Many western reporters tend to have a mindset that there are only two groups of people in China: democratic activists and evil communists... The fact is the China has changed a lot. Most people just don't care about anything, or have an opinion quite different from the stereotype, just like anywhere in the world.