Post-Quake, China Cuts Access to Entertainment Web Sites

thefickler writes "The Chinese Government has issued orders that all entertainment web sites and regular television programming be shut down completely for the next 3 days. Only web sites covering the recent tragic 7.8 magnitude earthquake and television stations broadcasting CCTV earthquake programming will be allowed to remain live." Can anyone with Web access in China confirm this report? From an AP story on the state of communications in the country right now, it appears at least that China is (despite ongoing monitoring) allowing freer than usual communications in the wake of the quake.

Comments

Re:monitored is not free

[smilindog2000]

I'm going to do something dangerous, and quote my wife as a well informed person. According to her, right after the quake, the Chinese government banned all reporting in the effected areas. As usual, all the press backed off and went home. Except for two reporters from two papers. These two reporters rapidly reported on the actual situation, and the other newspapers and TV stations saw these competitors getting all the viewers and readers. Nationally, news organizations then defied the government order and reported on the situation openly.

So... the government is pissed, and is punishing the media organizations by sending them home for a while. I could be wrong, but that's more or less what I heard from my wife, and like in China, it's dangerous around here to disagree with the boss :-)

Its regional

[Demonicat]

Before I launch into opinion, let me first state the facts jack. China's Internet censorship (the great firewall part of golden shield) is regionally based. Similar to the US radio having locality based censorship. In February for example, the university I teach at(Inner Mongolia Uni of Tech/science), could not access wikipedia- but could access flickr. In Beijing, it was the opposite- its locality based and gladder for firefox kills it anyway. That said, I still have full internet. Yesterday the DNS kept crashing out, but internet is rolling along fine and dandy...or as close as we get here at 100kbs on a pppoe. All sites are behaving normally. Now opinion. While I am a firm believer and activist for Freedom of Information, in this case I believe shutting down a bit of commuications may be needed. Many people in China are a bit on edge currently, with the olympics, the protests, the whole t1b3t thing- and the earthquake moved them right to the edge. Rumours are circulating around the country here about radiation dangers, the government not acting, the goverment causing the earthquake like some kind of James Bond Villian...lots of BS. The end result of this is that people are too panicked and nervous to help out with reconstruction or aiding survivors- not good. The limiting of information until the area is secure and survivors helped is very important at this time.