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. "
How do we know that the people who are 'speaking out against the BBC' aren't themselves being coerced into doing so in an attempt by the chinese govornment to negate the BBC's coverage of Chinese freedom of speech issues.
Damn I'm paranoid
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
What else are the BBC going to be interested in? What flavour rice the bloggers prefer?
Seriously though, the BBC is a major news site. Censorship in China is a major issue. What other issue measures equal in magnitude to prompt the BBC to interview a Chinese blogger?
Argh.
"Please BBC, stop highlighting our plight for freedom on the internet."
Hmmm I wonder who could possibly be behind this...
From the BBC article: .......
We don't know why Chinesse have the idea we censor them, when they state that "BBC MAKES ME **C*"
The writer continues:
" Being **ed by BBC is no fun, it is a **ing experience. At times, ***rs can get very ***.
Recently over a ** in the ** ****. BBC news reader Jonathan asked the Home Secretary: 'Did you threaten to **ck him (a junior minister)?',
the home secretary replied calmly: 'I *ed him'.
Jonathan: 'Did you *** him!'
Secretary: 'I *ed him'
Jonathan again Did you **** him'
Secretary again: I *ed him
Jonathan again: Did you **en him?'
**ed 9 times, ** Jonathan *ed: 'You are a *ard, aren't you? Why can not you just admit that you *ed him!'
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I would say that the BBC's remit is to be the voice of the British people
Then I guess FoxNews is the voice of the American people?
The BBC's remit is to be the EARS of the British people, not the voice, dumbass.
I don't think Chinese people expect the sort of combative, probing, in-your-face interviewing techniques that the best of the BBC journalists employ.
IMO, most BBC journalists really do the job - i.e. asking questions of the 'high and mighty' as well as the 'man in the street' that the viewers/listners would like to ask themselves, and not taking waffle and bullshit for an answer.
I'd love to see the BBC's Jeremy Paxman interview George Bush, for example - nah! never going to happen.
From one of the bloggers complaining about the BBC's aggressive interviewing:
No shit. Did you ever think that it's because, particularly in the case of politicians, they are unwilling to tell the truth, or at least give a straight answer?
The example given is a politician dodging the question of whether he threatened somebody or not. The (repeatedly asked) question was "Did you threaten him?" and the (repeated) answer was "I warned him.", without any clarification of the distinction being drawn. Why couldn't the politician say "No, it wasn't a threat, because..."?
This is very reminiscent of Paxo's famous BBC interview, in which he repeated the same question twelve times when the politician dodged the question. I think it's a good thing to do. If you defer to the interviewee and don't call them on it when they dodge the questions, you are, in essence, just giving them a mouthpiece to offer their unchallenged claims. That's not an interview, that's an advert. They might as well do away with the interviewer altogether if they can't get answers to their questions.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
If I were a reporter interviewing chinese bloggers, censorship would be high on my list. Some of these bloggers maintain there's not much censorship going on. Have they forgotten the whole MSN Spaces fiasco? In my book, government censorship is never acceptable, and we should never stop criticising it. That includes journalists being annoying and asking tough questions.
If what they're saying is true, it's kind of an interesting problem. On the one hand, interviewers should stay on the topic at hand. No use asking about the Great Firewall when the topic at hand is the toxic water flowing through Harbin right now, ya know?
But at the same time, from a socialogical perspective, the Firewall is fascinating. How selective can you make such a firewall, and in what ways are the people still happy knowing that they are being sheltered from things. Is this brainwashing (as it must certainly appear to a Western perspective) or is this simply a different view on the world that the West cannot wrap their heads around.
It reminds me somewhat of WWII, and the rush during and afterwards to understand the essence of the Japanese people. In short, Japanese were doing things that seemed bizarre and impossible to the Western soldiers, and this set off a near 60 year rush to understand the Japanese people. I think we're beginning to see the inklings of the same thing here (for more information, go look up nihonjinron, or Ruth Bennedict, author of the first book of these studies.)
- Toxic leak in river
- Bird Flu Death
- A WTO conference
- Torture
- Art on show in London
So maybe not overflowing with positive stories, but this IS typical news coverage. You have to wonder if these Chinese Bloggers are paid/told to put forward that censorship is somehow a non issue.The first sentence was misleading and wrong. BBC said something like this- More than 300 bloggers attended the conference.
Yining corrected the BBC woman."No. you are wrong, the meeting participants are less than 200."
According Chinese law, any assembles by more than 200 people should be approved officially.If not, it's illegal.
Clever clever boy Yining... he caught the BBC in a lie. However, the Chinese "Law" he mentioned, interestingly, says waves more than anything he could've said in any interview. I don't know if he did it on purpose, but that by itself should give the BBC enough to write about. Right of association anyone?http://supreme.lp.findlaw.com/constitution/ amendment01/12.html
The beauty of Yining's comment is that he takes such laws as accepted truths, and uses it to disprove the BBC's claim the same way a physicist would disprove a certain claim using Newton's or Einstein's theories.
Clearly, the BBC has tons of stories from China that aren't about censorship. For example, this story is not about Chinese censorship, it's about Microsoft's censorship, coincidentally in China. This story about political coersion doesn't even mention censorship. Frankly, with this range of topics, I don't see why these poor people, who are typically subject to such intolerable censorship, have anything to complain about.
This is not good reporting. Good reporting, by definition should be reporting the facts, which in this case, are the interviewees responses. If they are not responding the way you would like, then you shouldn't be trying to force them to do so thorugh agressive bully tactics, just move on to the next question.
I do not have a hard time believing that censorship is the last thing on most of these guy's minds. Has anyone even looked at one of the blogs that was probed by the BBC? Does this blog look like it was being censored? (Hint - take a look about midway down the page at "The other side of China" post - not very flattering for the government)
I have no doubt that censorship in China is very troublesome. That does not mean it is troublesome to *everyone*. The guy was asked to give an interview about his blog, he probably wants to do just that, hopefully to promote it and get more page hits. Maybe he does not want to wax philisophical about the problems of his government. That's his right, so stop harassing him! You're supposed to be a member of a country who values freeodom of speech, give him a chance to exercise his.
If I write a blog about Chinese pop stars, and someone from the BBC contacts me about an interview, I naturally assume they want to talk about a) the blog, and/or b) Chinese pop stars. I do *not* assume they are going to start probing me about how the government censors my blog, which they may or may not do. So, if they ask me these kinds of questions, is it unheard of that I would want to redirect the interview to the original purpose ?
The whole reason these people even give these interviews is to promote themselves and their blog. It is not to act as a political messenger. If they are anywhere near as apethetic toward politics as 99.99% of the western world, they likely give two shits about government censorship, since they don't have any radical ideas worth censoring.
Despite what you may or may not believe, the majority of middle-class Chinese are not much different from you ("you" being the average westerner), your'e both happy little consumer monkeys, who swallow whatever the press and big money market toward you, and is too busy obessing about the latest Teen Idol(tm) episode to worry about AIDS pandemics in Africa or anything else worth worrying about. (Seriously - WTF is with all this bird flu paranoia about something that may or may not happen, when thousands are dying daily in Africa from preventable diseases just because they can't afford the few bucks a day for treatment?)
Every Chinese guy hates the BBC. But I think I know the real reason why. It's because of history. Britain is the only country in the world that succesfully conquered China. The Chinese have always felt humiliated by the British. The Opium Wars and the Boxer Rebellion, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_Rebellion , still raise deep emotions among people of Chinese origin. It's the same reason why the Chinese hate the Japanese for the Rape of Nanjing. It's all about the loss of face.
OK. I take the bait.
Slashdot is a blog. It is on the Internet. I am posting this from China.
Here is my blog entry:
1. Chinese people ought to have the same or more freedom as people in the West.
2. Taiwan IS an independent state, which all Chinese already know.
3. China should abolish the fanghuo changcheng (GFW) immediately, and let people use the Internet as freely as in the West (and it can be discussed how freely it can really be used in the West). I don't how many times I have argued this on Chinese state-owned BBS:s.
4. Mao Zedong was an asshole, a pervert and a mass murderer. He was renowned for his serious cases of VD after trying out guniangs in the villages on every one of hid goddamn trip. I have said this too on state-owned BBS:s.
I am now waiting for the gong'an to storm my apartment, transport me to a football field and give me the neck shot in front of a cheering audience...
Oh, before I die, let me just add that I, too, am fed up with the BBC, because they DON'T report the social and cultural context to the filtering in China, but see it all from a modern Western perspective (just back fifty years, and it would be different); they DON'T realize there is a process, and they CAN'T see that much has already gone in the right direction. Freedom IS gradually increasing in China, but you should NEVER expect China to be EXACTLY like the West.
OK, off to the football field...
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.
Well, I am an Chinese. Few things to say here:
/., you can also experience the censorship in China.l l ?x=abcl ?x=%B7%BD%D6%DB%D7%D3
1) The censorship really exits in China.
2) The censorship is not techinically hard to be breakthrough.
3) The censorship is not efficiently enough to censor all things that suppose to be censored.
4) The censorship is loosening but will still be there in the near future.
5) The censorship is just a small piece compared with the control of media and lots of other things on the dark side of china.
So what should I do as an Chinese?
I will try to tell the truth to my compariot about the censorship and the way to break it.
I am not supposed to be exposed by westen media like bbc that maybe noticed by the censorship.
However not everyone tends to help others.
They just keep themself safe that is reasonable after things happened in 1989 Jun 4.
For those
i.e. The current headline of the people's paper (ccp's official paper) is now:
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1027/3887454.htm
add some parameter to it you can still visit it, i.e.:
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1027/3613060.htm
add some censored word in parameter then you will not be able to visit it, i.e.:
http://politics.people.com.cn/GB/1027/3887454.htm
(%B7%BD%D6%DB%D7%D3 is some censored chinese word in hexadecimal coding)
and you will be not able to access the page in certain period of time.
It interesting that sites censored are mosty in chinese and sites like slashdot and bbc are not censored.
Finally thank you all care about the censorship in china.
For those chinese who are not censored or breakthrough, do something positive but not keep silence.
"They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
---by Martin Niemoeller on the New England Holocaust Memorial
I was just continuing the joke. If somebody gets this far they should hopefully have figured this out.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Well, fuck, I actually do know something about Western culture, since I am a Westerner. And as a such, I can tell you that in most Western countries, you are only allowed freedom because the ruling party is *letting* you. I don't have the freedom to drive on the freeway in 190 mph, because the ruling party forbids it. In my native home country, I am not allowed to do nuclear research, because the ruling party forbids it. In neighboring Germany, I cannot express Nazi views, because the ruling party forbids it (and also does the same filtering as China with regards to US Nazi parties). In neigboring Denmark, I can't marry a pretty Chinese or Moroccan or even US girl until they are 25 or so...
And in the holy USA, the land of the free, you can't take a goddamn joint without risking being jailed, stripped of all your property, and also stripped of all your democratic rights. This is because the ruling party in the US decided you shouldn't be allowed to vote if you have a deviant opinion from theirs. And since the other party agrees, it doesn't matter that you formally have a democracy (a two party system).
The BBC, like most other foreign news sources, get their news from Chinese sources. There is a vivid debate in most areas in China, and people are interested.
The censorship in China really boils down to a few key points, like independence movements and other threats (or imagined threats) to the regime. Although I certainly don't agree with this or think it is a good situation, it isn't as bad in China as people in the West are LED to believe by BBC and others.
But to understand the censorship in China, one needs to understand the country, its history, its cultural heritage, its social context and so on. I suggest that you start with Confucius. Fuck, the BBC should be doing this background job for you, but they don't care.