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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."
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.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
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.
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 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
True events can hardly be described as bashing.
I agree we should also take notice of other countries transgressions but that doesn't mean we can ignore major stories in other countries because their quota for the month has been met.
What is this, China bashing month?
-- yeah, and they deserve it
how about posting about those too?
-- you see all those little columns on the left, like 'Apple', 'Hardware', 'Science'? Knock yourself out.
I'm critical of China
-- does not appear so
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
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
That's when you write a book and spend the next several years of your life giving speeches at Universities (like Mitnick, Poulson, etc). Being a victim in the United States can be great for your career as long as it doesn't kill you.
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
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.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
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.
No, this is pure China bashing. There's nothing new in what is reported, just new iterations of the same stuff, and it is the same China-illiterate crowd that howls "Communists!" as always.
There are other stories that could have been discussed, like Swedish security police and state department shutting down a political party's web site for showing a picture of Muhammed (Sweden is supposedly a democracy), like Austria sentencing a British author to three years in prison for having non-conformant views (Austria is supposedly a democracy), like the EU deciding to store Internet traffic, like the dissolution of the freedom of the press (and speech) in Europe and other parts of the Western world after Islamist extremists threatened with violence.
These questions are so much more important at this moment than what is happening in a dictatorship on its slow march to civilized society and democracy.
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.
The media overreporting the same kind of true events over and over can be.
What is "overreporting" in this context? These aren't trivial events like a presidential blowjob, or Y2K, or an MP caught doing naughty things with a doberman. These are pertinent issues. The Chinese represent what, a sixth of humanity? I'd say that news reports about their political situation, good or bad, are more important than most.
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.
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.
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.