China to Control Reports of Foreign News Agencies

afa writes "According to Xinhuanet.com, Xinhua News Agency on Sunday promulgated a set of measures to regulate the release of news and information in China by foreign news agencies. From the article: 'Where a foreign news agency violates the Measures in one of the following manners, Xinhua News Agency shall give it a warning, demand rectification within a prescribed time limit, suspend its release of specified content, suspend or cancel its qualifications of a foreign news agency for releasing news and information in China, on the merits of each case.'"

Comments

Key scary bits...

[tygerstripes]

From TFA:

to promote the dissemination of news and information in a sound and orderly manner

That's how they're calling it, anyway. Spin it right and the People will swallow anything.

Foreign news agencies shall not directly solicit subscription of their news and information services in China

So, no internationally recognised (relatively) independent news agency can even advertise. Period. I might have presented a slightly skewed interpretation of "solicit", but that's a bit crappy anyway.

In using news and information from a foreign news agency, the user in China shall clearly indicate the sources and shall not transfer them to another party in any form....penalties for violations in the releasing, distributing or using of news and information from a foreign news agency in China

So if you do access news from a foreign agency - whether vetted or not by the Xinhua New Agency - it is illegal to pass on that information. Fuck me, that's horrible.

And from the submitted article it seems that they're even prepared to revoke the state-defined status of any international news-agency who contravenes these measures in any way.

What also bothers me is the notion of vetting this stuff at source. Are the XNA going to demand that news agencies do as Google have done, procuding a secondary, vetted, approved version of the news? Google argued their case for doing so to the international web community (successfully or otherwise, depends on your POV - they're getting the revenue from it anyway), but most international news agencies pride and extol themselves for their independence and impartiality. Will they bow to the same pressure in order to, as Google said (again, my own interpretation), "gain a foothold in China and at least keep its information borders actively moving traffic, however restricted"?

Scary stuff indeed.

Chinese information accuracy suspect

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who is in China, I read the English version of the "China Daily" as often as it is delivered to me.

This is a paper you would be within your rights to class as an "official English newspaper" from the Chinese government.

But guess what?

It contains mistakes. The reports found within, if they are the official story, are erroneous.

As alarming as it may be that the Chinese Government is trying to control what foreign publications publish in China, what is of greater concern is the dubious accuracy of their own reporting.

A case in point is a recent *front page* story on a lake where all of the fish died. The story in the paper ran with the excuse of the water temperature dropping from 40C down to 20C. If you do some research on oxygenation of water, you will find that the opposite is true: a lower water temperature holds more oxygen. Which then leads you to wonder, what really happened? (Most likely the continued hot weather caused the water to become too hot and the fish were going to die whether the temperature dropped or not.)

This is not an isolated incident in the reports I read of the English version of "China daily".

Until the Chinese can get the facts and figures straight/correct, punishing outside news agencies for reporting something differently than the "official story" is ridiculous.

FWIW, if you watch CNN, on the weekend they ran a story about 30 years after Mao's death. In China this was shown up until the point of where it started to show black and white film.