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Chinese Journalists Beat Censorship With Web
chris-chittleborough writes "When Beijing tried to make a journalist's pay at one newspaper depend on official reactions to their stories, a web-savvy reporter was able to create a groundswell of public opinion and reverse the move." From the article: "Just before the meeting, Li had posted a blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials. No one told the editor in chief. For 90 minutes, he ran the meeting, oblivious to the political storm that was brewing. Then Li announced what he had done."
Where is the ironical podcast?
Why UNIX?
"In Communist China, Web Journalist Censored, Beaten"
(Someone had to say it.)
It's not the us where they can just rag on their leaders and thumb their nose without cosequence, as much as i'd love it to be otherwise. What's to stop the party from taking revenge or setting an example by making him "disappear"? I'm concerned for this guy.
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Followup story: Chinese web censors beat journalists. With sticks.
actually i predict he'll go mysteriously "missing" next week.....
A lot of Americans, left and right, (yes, both sides do it equally) talk about giving up freedom like we can get it back in the next election. Freedom has rarely ever been given back in any form because an electorate said, "please sir, might we have some more." It usually takes overt acts of defiance which makes this journalist all the more heroic given which society we're talking about.
The irony is that in America, anyone who votes for the two major parties is voting for the rise of Fascism. The Chinese live tyranny daily compared to us. If we ever get to the point where we live like them, it'll be our fault, and I don't see many Americans today who have the guts to pull a stunt anywhere near like this. A nation that won't even tell private security officers at stores like Best Buy to leave them alone when they're harrassing them, won't stay free long.
In a related story, senior editor Li Datong has been escorted from the city, for some restful quail hunting....
-- www.globaltics.net
Political discussion for a new world
What is this, China bashing month?
I'm sure there are alot of other wrongs to right out there, how about posting about those too?
I'm critical of China, but this is getting out of hand.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Wow.
Well, there's a plan for defeating censorship... it only takes someone outside China with an IM client and a group of people willing to forward the messages.
Especially if the messages end with "... and Kwai Chang Caine, who taught his son wisdom in a Shaolin temple, forgot to forward this message. An evil force destroyed the temple. Father and son each believed the other had perished. Then Kwai Chang Caine found the message in his chat log and forwarded it to all the people on his contact list. Now they are reunited..."
Ignore this signature. By order.
I've been noticing a lot of press on China lately, and it seems that reporters are taking braver actions than before. Do these events portend the fall of the China Communist Party? Will the CPC fall from within? If it does, that would be a wonderful tribute to the strength of human will, especially considering that the Iron Curtain required external help.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
The goverment doesn't care if they suck all the money from you (that's what taxes are for), but being called a terrorist will get you blacklisted forever. Or maybe that' if they call you a communist. Hrmmmmm...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"When Beijing tried to make a journalist's pay at one newspaper depend on official reactions to their stories, a web-savvy reporter was able to create a groundswell of public opinion and reverse the move."
Ed Note: Must use the check of spell.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
The party's propaganda department had targeted Freezing Point in its media crackdown because it often published investigative reports that embarrassed officials, as well as essays on history, society and current events that challenged the party line.
It surprises me that they didn't just call the cops to come in there, arrest everyone and shut the whole thing down.
Or just lock the doors to the place and tell everyone to stay home and do some censored blogging.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
this post really lacks for a good troll, it's not even worth my mod points to mark it down.
Do not hire any more journalists with noticeable bulges in their pant crotches caused by a case of having massive balls.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
Censors beats Chinese journalists with sticks.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
I read about this from a Digg post and noticed that these events weren't exactly new - but the recent exposure here in the US has brought it to our attention.
Li Datong, the author of the memo (I can't help but be reminded of Jerry Maguire), was basically fired for this.
"They are being transferred to work in the paper's news research department, which they jokingly referred to in their letter as 'the warehouse.'"
from "Radio Free Asia"
For those who are interested in the letter that got the Chinese censors so up in arms, a copy of Li Datong's letter can be found here.
The old ways of China are falling right before our eyes. The question is will this great nation degress into civil war or will enough of this young free-thinking generation pull together and peacefully take the reigns from the old guard. If the latter happens America may be left wondering where its world dominance went so quickly. I don't know enough about China's political situation to guess which route they will take though.
In China journalists brave jail and execution for independence. In America journalists are afraid to ask politicians questions about their crimes.
You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
--
make install -not war
...if it took a year or two.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
He'll be left alone until the West forgets, which will happen within a year or two, five at most.
:-(
Then he'll quietly 'retire', or 'fall into ill health', or 'go to stay with a loving relative', and no one will ever hear from him again.
It's a shame. He was a very brave man. The best we can do to honour his memory is to keep the media spotlight on the issues he will no doubt end up giving his life for.
It might not happen. Nelson Mandella survived. Change is possible.
--
AC
Yep, Word 9.0.6 finds nothing wrong with that. I don't see anything offhand myself. What exactly are you smoking and where can I find some?
Someone save me from this sanity.
The government's Internet censors scrambled, ordering one Web site after another to delete the letter. But two days later, in an embarrassing retreat, the party bowed to public outrage and scrapped the editor in chief's plan to muzzle his reporters.
This is a perfect example of both the promise and the peril of the Internet. The fact is Li, but moving quickly and quietly, was able to get his story out on the Web and probably global during the span of a 90-minute meeting. It took two days for the Communist Party in China to realize that the information had travelled beyong their reach and they had no choice but to back down.
It would be interesting to know the speed of propogation of any piece of information on the Internet, in other words, given that a piece of information is placed somewhere (blog, news site, etc.), how long would it take that piece of information to travel globally? I suppose you could figure out a rough approximation by how many times the information is linked to and from where. But even with no hard data, it goes to show that any information, reliable (in this case) or erroneous (possibly) can travel so far afield that authorities can do little to stop it without advanced warning.
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If you RTFA it's pretty cool. Li attacks the Communist Party with real communism. Whodathunk?
The core of these regulations is that the standards for appraising the performance of the newspapers will not be on the basis of the media role according to Marxism. It is not based upon the basic principles of the Chinese Communist Party. It is not based upon the spirit of President Hu Jintao about how power, rights and sentiments should be tied to the people. It is not based upon whether the masses of readers will be satisfied. Instead, the appraisal standard will depend upon whether a small number of senior organizations or officials like it or not.
Li Datong and his deputy were still fired, and as Li was the editorial heart of the China Youth Daily, even if the policy was not applied, censorship still won the day.
This seems more of a loss than a victory to me.
This must be where pies go when they die.
they should have never been removed.
Makes perfect sense to me. It's hard to break the sentence down any more than that in english. The first section of the sentence (When ....) specifies a time period (the time when Beijing tried to make a journalist's pay depend on the reaction to their stories). The second part describes what happened in that time period (a reporter was able to reverse the move).
It certainly does not obey the current rule of writing newspaper content at a seventh-grade level so as to not confuse the masses, though. Perhaps you were confused by the descriptive phrases that described the reporter (web-savvy), how he reversed the move (by creating a groundswell of public opinion), or where this took place (at one newspaper).
The "War" on Terrorism is self-sustaining and unwinnnable. If we wait for it to end, we may be waiting for an ideological shift that is never going to happen.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I see a real underreporting of stuff which is maybe worst (as another poster on the same thread level listed) on the EU and US side. Funnily it is a human right violation to imprison a chinese "freedom" fighter for life because he goes against the party line, but it isn't to imprison seemingly without process/judgement in a cuban prison. Yeah. Right.
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I believe that he is referring to the disagreement between the the singular of "journalist's" and plural of "their". Now that's anal. It's also a grammar error.
... is change from within. This is wonderful news.
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My guess? Someone has got needle-nose pliers on the guy's balls as we speak. Next they will pluck all of his ball hair with tweezers. The finale will involve a car battery, sandpaper, a sheet of paper, lemon juice, coca-cola, and of course, the guy's balls.
The Roman Empire was a military dictatorship from the beginning (The Imperator was the military commander).
That's the First Century BC (I'll leave it to historians to quibble about whether the empire started with Caesar overstaying his term as Dictator or the crowning of Augustus), and it lasted the Fifth Century AD in the West--and another thousand years in the East.
That's a very long time to wait . . .
hawk
Right, except the reference is to Bejing. Which refers to the city or paper? Either way that is plural and the use of their is correct. I really don't see any fault with this sentence at all. Just another nazi gone bad.
So it was a Phyrric victory at best.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
A. Some chinese people are doing very well financially. People with good pay checks don't riot unless they are under threath to loose them. The LA riots did not take place in the hills.
B. There are those who claim China is becoming more capatalist. Yeah right. Only those who do not have a clue as to what it means believe that. China very much has its own system and it isn't what you think it is.
C. They only got to look to the west. No not the US, Russia to see what happens when the communist leave. Do they want that? See point A. and D.
D. Variant of point A. It is hard to get upset by unjustice to someone else especially when protesting about gets you in trouble and you are doing fairly well while the unjustice is going on but stand to really loose by stopping it.
Recap, It is hard to get upset about say tibet for a chinese person when doing so can get you in serious trouble when you do not succeed in overthrowing the goverment and when you do your country becomes a slum like russia.
The chinese at the moment got a unique system that is making a lot of people rich (well except the poor but who cares about them) and as long as the repression is happening to other people people are reluctant to loose a good thing.
Yeah it is nasty but if mothers can live with the husband who gives them a good income while he rapes their kids then I am not suprised people can happily live under a system that kills some total strangers hundreds of miles away. (A very real example to proof this? Female circumsion. It is being battled in the simplest way, get the fathers to do it. They are fine when it happens outside their visions but when they are asked to hack up their crying daughters they suddenly become very reluctant to keep up the old ways (meanwhile keep the kid away from grandmothers cause they will have no troubles, women are evil). Seen it on tv so it must be true.)
Will the system ever collapse? Perhaps. Nothing is forever but lets examine Cuba. It is still there despite not being america's favorite trading partner. Being in a dictarorship is not all that bad apparently if you are not the one being trampled on.
and lets be honest, who in the west who is upset about western goverments support for the war on terror is really prepared to overthrow those goverments? Complain all you want about Bush and call him Hitler 2 but unless you are currently practising your sniping skills you are meaningless, as meaningless as this journalists protest.
I see this as just another attempt by the chinese goverment to keep control. Some will fail of course but others will stick. Just like in the west and every attempt to get in stuff like mandatory ID's and camera's. I seen a lot of that stuff and lots spark a huge protest and yet over the 35 years of my live I have switched from not even owning a passport to carrying one all the time and there is a camera in the highstreet around the corner.
Because I am not ready to give up my okay live to battle it.
The chinese goverment chance of falling is about the same as that of the current western goverments. Except the chinese economy at the moment is doing well.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wonder how the existance of a censored google would have effected the equation. Would it have made it easier for word to spread quickly?
Notice how the government had the ability to censor any web page it wanted, but that even so, word spread faster than the governement could stop it.
I'd say a general case was just made *for* the morality of companies offering censored internet services in China.
If email services were not a prevalent as they were, censored or not, Li might not have gotten away with it.
I cleaned my windowless bathroom with some mega grout cleaner yesterday and have felt a bit odd since.
It's called Lysol Scrubless Tile Cleaner if you want to give it a go.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
Li didn't seem all that worried about either, to be honest. I think you're romanticizing things a tad.
In America journalists are afraid to ask politicians questions about their crimes.
So, which is more insideous? The blatant "don't go against the groupthink, or we'll kill you"?
Or, the subtle "don't go against the groupthink, because we give nothing useful in a public press conference, and you won't be given the good stuff anymore like your colleagues. You'll be labelled a 'biased liberal', and because nobody in the administration will speak to you, you'll be unemployable"?
Study the White House press core situation, and tell me that isn't censorship in full force. The press secretary refutes any serious question with almost every trick in the logical-fallacy handbook. Unless you play along, you don't get the "government official, speaking on condition of anonymity" or "after the press conference, Scott McClellan said privately..." tidbits. Remember the days when presidents would be the ones speaking at a press conference, not a guy who keeps saying, "The President feels..."?
I recall reading recently how the WH press core got all bent out of shape about getting the news late about Cheney's little shooting incident. Where was the outrage over something that matters, like domestic spying? And if they were truly so angry, why didn't they just all get up and leave?
The White House press core are like crack whores. They rely on yet despise their pimps, occasionally developing some backbone or attitude. But at the end of the day, they're still just puppet addicts.
Please help metamoderate.
Good for him! Although it makes me quite concerned what could happen to this guy for such a bold move. Can we follow up with him periodically to make sure he's safe?
ConsultingFair.com
Why haven't we stopped all diplomatic relations with China? Why haven't we imposed trade sanctions?
Oh, right, China supplies us with cheap manufactured goods, and makes various U.S. companies richer.
Apparently, being a totalitarian, human-rights-suppressing government is *perfectly fine* with the United States as long as you supply us with lots of cheap goods. Oh, and buy up our debt so we can continue our fiscally irresponsible ways.
Because they survive partly on goverment grants they got to make responsible programming. So lots of boring talkie news programs and very little pure mindless entertainment to compete with the commercial stations.
This was thought up by dutch politicians as a way to ensure that some quality news tv would remain. All that has happened is that it shows that politicians are stupid dumbfucks who should be hung from the neck.
Why? Well they still got to compete because the other part of the income comes from ads and from people subscribing to them (well the tv magazine each one sells) so they still got to be popular?
How do you become popular when you have to produce only news programs and other reponsible stuff? You make it as lightweight as possible so it can compete with the mindless entertainment. The 8 o'clock news used to be 30 minutes. Last time I watched it was 5.
The worst? The KRO (catholics) has a new magazine that came after the news that highlighted current events. It used to be okay. they had a nasty bit years ago where a reporter faked a scandal with human heads being for sale but otherwise were okay.
What was on last time I watched? 30 minutes of drivel following the dutch royal family (americans, you may be fat lardass gassguzzling warmongering idiots but at least you got no royalty. Applause for yourselve) in the most moronic way. Not even a hint of critism, the entire thing look like an informerical except that even then you usually got someone asking, "but this can't be true can it". None of that.
I was litteraly dumbstruck. I don't watch a lot of tv (the internet takes up all my mindless entertainment time) and haven't watch dutch tv in months but I had no idea things had gotten so bad.
It was about as good a news story as to MTV reports on the latest movie.
Oh and it seems this program was part of a sequel, at least one before and one coming next week. At least. A minimum of 1.5 hours of meaningless royalty worshipping. On a news program.
Perhaps people in China are better off. At least they can only improve. In the west we can only sit back and watch things collapse. When you protest you hear stuff, but we got to attract viewers or there are plenty of places worse in the world.
A, if you want to attract viewers do the naked news, Real News with Real Nudes. As for their being worse place in the world. Yeah so? There are worse things then me sticking your microphone up your ass but I bet you will still scream when I do it!
Oh and the next time I see some journalist reporting LIVE! from a location where nothing is happening talking like WW3 is about to start I am going to scream. /me flips to the BBC news AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHH
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
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Well, when you're a free trade partner that can paint any critic as xenophobic, you can get any damn thing you want.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The irony is that in America, anyone who votes for the two major parties is voting for the rise of Fascism.
No, the two party system is simply the byproduct of the need for a elected majority to make law and control the US government. The republicans and democrats ones simply exchange members from the political center in long period cycles. I see the purity of Reagan's party (smaller government, fewer taxes, strong defense, moral clarity) has been sorely compromised in the present by moderates. Today's republican party is unrecognisable even from the mid 1990's. The pendulum is likely to swing back democrat soon.
an ill wind that blows no good
Google knows that censoring the Internet is impossible. China's government still doesn't understand that it's impossible. Li proved that it's impossible. This is one reason why Google needs to succeed in China. The Chinese will use Google to find what they're looking for, regardless of what the Government tries to do. I believe this will slowly lead to the uncensoring of China.
Of course, I could be dead wrong.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Clearly China does not do a good enough job of discrediting and ostracizing its critics in the public sphere. And clearly it has not done a good job at making the Chinese people self-centered and aloof from each other.
Play the same scenario in the story out in the US in your head, and imagine what would happen. Major media would ignore it. Mass populace would ignore it, writing it off as crackpottery, bolstered by the lack of media coverage. Most people would delete the message as an "obvious spam" or "liberal bullshit" or some such. Result effect: zero.
The Chinese people actually *care about* and *believe* these sorts of things. That's where the PRC has clearly failed. They have not properly desensitized and disinterested their public. They need a heavy dose of selfishness injected into their population. Then they could get away with an awful lot more.
Screwing US tech and CRM workers with offshoring? Who cares? Screwing the working poor with no benefits? Who cares? Screwing the poor with social service cuts? Who cares? Screwing the economy, international affairs, and budget with a poorly defensible war? Who cares?
Clearly, the Chinese people care far too much.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
How come when I send this URL thru MSN Messenger:e -the-hats-out-of-tinfoil-from-the-dollar-store-did nt-you-155835.php
http://www.screenhead.com/funny/upsetting/you-mad
It never makes it to the recipient?? Is it because the URL is too long?
Odd.
The result was tanks in the square.
Regards;
Beijing tried to make a journalist's pay at one newspaper depend on official reactions to their stories
Am I the only one getting tired of seeing China copy all of our ideas? This is just getting out of control. Next thing you know, they'll be spying on their citizenry. Look, China: You guys need to become a democracy if you want to use our ideas. You're only allowed to quash minority opinion when it's done through an electorate.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Do you cretins actually think that you are *free* because you get to criticize President dubuya on the internet? Our country is being sold out wholesale from under our noses. We go $200 billion a year deeper in debt to China alone. Money we have no way of paying back. The Federal government has a debt in the trillions, going up at half-a-trillion per year. The federal deficit now is money that we are BORROWING to pay the INTEREST on outstanding debt. As a nation, we are charging our mastercard bill on our Visa card. As individuals we have a NEGATIVE savings rate - our citizens are going into hock at the rate of $1000/yr per person because they think the paper prices of homes in the real estate bubble are money they can actually spend and not have to pay back. Our country is poised on the verge of economic collapse the way Argentia and Brazil went decades ago. Hyperinflation of 2000 percent a year, 25-30 percent unemployment. The Chinese will 0WN us, and all they have to do is sit back and keep selling us TVs and stereos made with slave labor while we spend ourselves into ruin. Our leaders all own big pieces of the Oil companies and retail chains that are selling us out, and don't give a D@MN because they are getting so rich in the process. And once the economic collapse hits, guess what comes next - a totalitarian seizure of power to "save us". Freedom isn't being able to whack off to internet pr0n whenever you want to or being able to call George W an @ssh0le on a blog- it is being able to support your family without killing yourselves in the process. Millions of Americans have lost this ability - they have exchanged $40-50K factory jobs for $10-15K service sector employment. And we ignore them because we can now get a 32-inch chinese TV for $189 at W@ll-Mart. Now the IT jobs are going overseas, and there is talk of doing medicine over the internet with foriegn doctors.
20 years from now you may be *FREE* to say F%CK online as often as you like, but your children will be trying to sneak onto fishing boats headed for china to try to get work so they can send a few yen back to feed their starving families.
Oh, but none of that matters because we can indulge in all the inconsequential whining that we want on blogs that no one but our close friends ever reads.
Fools.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
the (Semantic/Intelligent) WEB Censors YOU !
I told you so.
Regardless of government censorship or record seizure, there will be an exchange of ideas with the internet present in China. And there will be improvements that would not be possible without the internet.
That doesn't mean this journalist is home free. He may get it a lot worse than the poor guy Yahoo! was recently forced to turn records over on.
Anyone think that will stop the next guy?
Still think Yahoo! should pull out of China?
This guy was lucky (or unlucky) enough to have access to the newspapers website. The average person isn't going to have such a place to express these objections unless they have access to a Yahoo! website or something of the sort.
I think this will give China a better chance of getting out from under communism the way they want to than any form of outright revolution. And it will cost a lot fewer lives.
The Saddest part is the censors will blank out all of this news in two months, every Chinese language forum, site, blog, will all be censored. You won't find a trace of anything going on anywhere in the Chinese language. So everyone here says their usual jokes, hurrahs, etc, but it'll be meaningless with short short memory.
if i got this stupid bitch's spam. how does one accidently send an email worldwide?
In the US, when a subordinate refuses to follow the order of a superior and gets fired. This is called a business decision. In the PRC, when a subordinate refuses to follow the order of a superior and gets fired, the action is slammed as censorship.
It just seems that too many people get their panties in a twist when it comes to China. Somehow it gets painted as a nasty evil regime by mainstream US media. Then again, the US has always needed a bogeyman. Anyway, a journalist getting fired for disobeying probably won't even make the news if it happens in the US.
*shrug*
And what does this have anything to do with "Your Rights Online" anyway?
We realize that what affects anyone, anywhere
affects everyone, everywhere.
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Our vision of interconnectedness resonates
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I wonder if /. is blocked in China? Maybe it's public knowledge as to yes or no, but considering the vocal posts, I'd guess yes :) So, any ppl living in China reading this?
I'm wondering if the timing of this news is anyway related to the hearings in Washington D.C. related to the search companies. If this is being posted in support of them. With the additional resources, even censored ones, the chinese can access more information. Thus weakening the argument that the search companies are harming the chinese people.
Cham
I think the GP was referring to the fact that both the major parties have major fascistic tendencies.
I think you don't know the meaning of the word fascist. You are using it as a hyperbolic and misleading description of executive priviledge asserted by the President, and reactionary law making in congress, in the war against terror.
an ill wind that blows no good
Besides, the bread and circuses are better now. The problem with counting on the wrath of the people as a deterrent to tyranny is that all they (the tyrants) need to do to avoid a popular uprising is to keep (most of) the people just happy enough that they'll stay in line voluntarily -- which often just means keeping them fed and entertained. The Romans had "Bread and Circuses"; we have SUVs, big-screen TVs, and sports.
Keep that in mind while contemplating this
David Gould
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