Slashdot Mirror
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."
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
Your comment still being on slashdot: that is your freedom of speech.
Your comment being modded troll: that is everyone else's.
I'm not one to post quotes willy-nilly, but this one is particularly relevant to the free internet:
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....
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.
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.
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.