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Obama Talks Internet Freedom, China Censors
eldavojohn writes "In a town-hall-style Q&A with (hand-picked) Chinese students in Shanghai, President Obama made several statements knocking China's firewall and censorship. Quoting: 'I am a big believer in technology and I'm a big believer in openness when it comes to the flow of information. I think that the more freely information flows, the stronger the society becomes, because then citizens of countries around the world can hold their own governments accountable. They can begin to think for themselves. That generates new ideas. It encourages creativity. And so I've always been a strong supporter of open Internet use. I'm a big supporter of non-censorship. This is part of the tradition of the United States that I discussed before, and I recognize that different countries have different traditions. I can tell you that in the United States, the fact that we have free Internet — or unrestricted Internet access — is a source of strength, and I think should be encouraged.' The Washington Post notes that the event was broadcast only on the local level, and in fact Chinese authorities removed from view what little coverage it had gotten, after about an hour. But at least American news media are gobbling it up."
I think you mean ACTA speaks louder than words. :V
So that's why he's opposing and releasing all of the information about the ACTA treaty as well as allowing the pictures of the "POWs" that were enhanced interrogated to be shown. It's great to know that he got rid of all those national security and state secrets defenses in the courts, too.
The main headline : Obama SELLS American Freedom to Chinese
Bill O'Reilly - Obama is betraying all Americans by giving away the secrets of freedom to the Chinese
Glenn Beck - Obama is raising a Chinese Army to take over the United States
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I'm glad that in the United States, the president agrees that an open and uncensored internet is important to ensure the free exchange of ideas. Sometimes, to ensure true freedom of speech, you have to allow that which you may find objectionable or offensive, because once you start blocking some information, you start to... OMG what's that? Child pornography?!? BLOCK EVERYTHING, ARREST EVERYONE, MONITOR ALL TRAFFIC!
The non-rhetorical answer:
10M Fluent english speakers in China (0.77%) vs
2M Fluent chinese speakers in the US (0.57%)
However, an additional 300M Chinese (~23%) are learning english. That is an awful lot of young impressionable students.
I believe that five other american networks did say that, by refusing a white house press conference from which Fox News had been blocked.
Your comment still being on slashdot: that is your freedom of speech.
Your comment being modded troll: that is everyone else's.
Oh hell, accusing a conservative of bias ALWAYS shuts them up. I once accused a conservative of bias, and he couldn't speak for FIVE YEARS!
I can see why they think this is a restraint against Fox's speech.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Yea, whatever happened to it.
Because Fox News isn't broadcasting anywhere anymore. It's obvious that their rights aren't protected, and they were shut down.
Wait, What???? Oh sorry, here's Fox News on my TV right here!
I guess their rights to say whatever shit they want are indeed being defended. My bad.
So, are you saying that there is nothing between complete freedom and total shutdown?
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:
Despite the administration’s pledge to play nice earlier this week, the White House tried to exclude Fox News – alone among the five White House "pool" networks – from interviewing executive-pay czar Kenneth R. Feinberg on Thursday.
After CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC balked at the plan Tuesday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs about the appropriateness of the administration's saying that Fox News, which he called "one of our sister organizations," is "not a news organization."
(From The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press... but what would they know, right?)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Yeah, because refusing to give an interview is [i]"deciding what is truth and what is not"[/i]. Riiiiight. Let's face it, the whole Fox News thing is just Fox overdramatizing for the purposes of creating a controversy, as is usual for US TV stations.
Oh, and yeah, lying (See CBS and their fake GWB NG documents) and being a bunch of asshats is protected by the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of the Press.
If it were so, libel wouldn't be a crime.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Really removed from view? A quick check on the chinese newspapers, here for example todays Shanghai Daily, proves different:
http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?id=419690&type=Opinion
"Many of the students asked questions in English about Obama's views on Internet censorship, global leadership and Taiwan....
I read the article linked to at The Guardian, and A) it's not the publication but a post on a blog, and B) it doesn't say what you seem to think it's saying.
It doesn't say that Fox is a news network that is being bullied.
I haven't read the other link, but I suspect I'll find something similar...
You just totally lost me. I don't watch Fox News, but comparing them to child molesters is a very far stretch. Yes, I said very. It's because you went from intelligent conversation to utter ignorance and, yes, lies in one post. Again, I have no use for Fox News, but I respect their right to cover news events. The Obama administration's attempt to exclude Fox News, arguably the most viewed news source on cable TV, was politically incorrect any way you look at it. If you can't take criticism, you don't belong in politics, and you damn sure don't belong running an entire nation. Take Iran's president for example. Or China's administration. Or any country's leadership which protects political gain at the expense of the citizens' rights.
Health Freedom is almost as popular as Freedom itself.
NPR/PBS, reliant as they are mostly on voluntary public donations, is a mere shadow of the legislatively-created and taxpayer funded BBC in the UK (or the Australian equivalent, ABC, for that matter). A poor cousin at best. You can't compare them like that, it's chalk and cheese quality-wise.
Not many people see PBS as a high quality or popular channel in the US. But, in Australia the ABC is one of the most-watched and best-quality networks (and has multiple channels in most areas). Ditto with the UK and the BBC.
Is there really any difference?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
They're not allowed to express political opinions. The government can't control what they think, except by controlling their access to contrary opinions.
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but FoxNews? Sure, not every network can attend, so I understand if the Shelbyville Gazette doesn't get invited, but Fox has the ratings to be considered on the short list of invitees. Even the other networks are getting uncomfortable with it:
Well yes. And it's perfectly fine to be uncomfortable with it. Fox has long been known to be biased from both left and right (e.g. Jonah Goldberg). Is it awkward and troubling for a media outlet to be singled out from an administration? Sure. At the same time though, it's not exactly that FoxNews has been on the up and up. It never was. Even when it was launched it was heavily promoted on conservative talk radio. I'm sorry, but when I hear "It's fair and balanced!" from Rush Limbaugh, I'm suspicious. Now if this endorsement was coming from the Columbia School of Journalism or the Annenberg Political Fact Check, or the Pulitzer Prize winning St Petersberg Times' Political Fact Check, then yes. But an unabashedly biased source, no thanks.
So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except MSNBC? Is it OK to give "scoops" to every network but MSNBC?
I'd say yes. Yes, it is. And this actually happened, unlike that Fox News thing. Hopefully you were ranting about the Bush administration back when these things actually occurred in real life.
>>>>>So, is it OK to invite every major news network to an event except FoxNews?
>>
>>Yes, it's OK.
No it isn't because it then sets the precedent for the White House to block NBC, or ABC, if they make a critical remark about the president. Pretty soon we will have a media that won't report negative facts, for fear of having their WH press pass revoked.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Yeah but Fox News go out of their way to pull every dirty trick in the book to cause problems for Obama. And his guys aren't expected to reciprocate? Frankly the quality of "news" on Fox is so poor that they only really exist as a conservative mouthpiece anyway, so I don't know why they expected to get invited to a democrat whitehouse. Years before Obama got elected he'd been saying "american politics is going down the tubes, let's not bicker any more, both sides need to state what they want and let's see where the compromise is" etc. So the healthcare thing starts off and he gets paid shills turning up to public gatherings and protesting on behalf of medical insurance companies and Fox reports it with a straight face *as if they were just concerned members of the public*. Just straight out lying cause you want the other guy to win probably is going to make people angry in the long run.
You thought you could break the laws of physics without paying the PRICE?
For all the anguish and hysteria over Bush and his so called allegiance to big business, at least Bush wasn't just handing money to Wall Street.
Ahem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008
On October 1, 2008, the Senate debated and voted on an amendment to H.R. 1424, which substituted a newly revised version of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for the language of H.R. 1424. The Senate accepted the amendment and passed the entire amended bill, voting 74-25. Additional unrelated provisions added an estimated $150 billion to the cost of the package and increased the size of the bill to 451 pages. The amended version of H.R. 1424 was sent to the House for consideration, and on October 3, the House voted 263-171 to enact the bill into law. President Bush signed the bill into law within hours of its congressional enactment, creating a $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program to purchase failing bank assets.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
After the White House tried keeping got involved with Treasury's decision whether or not to allow Fox News in a round robin of interviews with "pay czar" Kenneth Feinberg, the five networks bureau chiefs banded together until Fox was permitted in. The joint action shows one of the difficulties if the administration tries to marginalize Fox, especially when that disrupts the network pool. (Fox's own report via Johnny Dollar). UPDATE: From what I hear, the situation was more between Treasury and Fox after the networks decided to pool interviews with Feinberg that had been requested by some, but not all of the networks. The bureau chiefs agreed that all networks should be included in the pool, including Fox, which had been missing from Treasury's list of networks involved in the interviews. The White House was contacted by Treasury, but as a spokesperson points out, they did not keep Fox from interviewing Feinberg. “The fact that Major Garrett conducted an interview with Ken Feinberg at a time when all the other networks did speaks for itself," deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest told POLITICO. “This White House has demonstrated our willingness to do a round of interviews with a range of networks but not Fox," Earnest added. "Clearly, that didn’t happen yesterday.” Indeed, the White House conducted interviews recently between Obama and five Sunday show hosts without including Fox's Chris Wallace. UPDATE 2: A Treasury official tells Mediaite: "There was no plot to exclude Fox News, and they had the same interview that their competitors did. Much ado about absolutely nothing."
So either Fox didn't request the interview or the Treasury didn't add it to the list and consequently they weren't in the orig pool.
Something to watch out for if it happens again, but I'm not going to attribute to malice what can easily be explained by error. However it looks like you're misrepresenting or unaware of the facts. It was the Treasury, not the WH, who didn't have Fox Entertainment News in the orig pool and the WH approved the additional interview for Fox Entertainment News.
Interesting that this story is a month old, I guess all of the other networks didn't attribute the omission to malice either.