Slashdot Mirror
China Bans Internet News Reporting As Media Crackdown Widens (bloomberg.com)
Earlier this month we learned that China had banned the use of social media as a news source. The local government feared that if news outlets were to report using signals coming from social media, there was a chance that fake, non-credible, and rumors would slip through the filter. It was absurd, to say the least, considering the government itself has been reportedly caught of posting a copious amount of misleading information on domestic social media platforms. In the latest wrinkle to the whole situation, the world's largest nation is now banning internet news reporting. Long time reader schwit1 shares a Bloomberg report on the same: China's top internet regulator ordered major online companies including Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to stop original news reporting, the latest effort by the government to tighten its grip over the country's web and information industries. The Cyberspace Administration of China imposed the ban on several major news portals, including Sohu.com Inc. and NetEase Inc., Chinese media reported in identically worded articles citing an unidentified official from the agency's Beijing office. The companies have "seriously violated" internet regulations by carrying plenty of news content obtained through original reporting, causing "huge negative effects," according to a report that appeared in The Paper on Sunday. The agency instructed the operators of mobile and online news services to dismantle "current-affairs news" operations on Friday, after earlier calling a halt to such activity at Tencent, according to people familiar with the situation. Like its peers, Asia's largest internet company had developed a news operation and grown its team. Henceforth, they and other services can only carry reports provided by government-controlled print or online media, the people said, asking not to be identified because the issue is politically sensitive.
Right. I'm sick of turning on the news to see what's going on... and instead of having reporters say, doing their fucking job, you have "Reports are coming in from Twitter...."
Yeah... Twitter... there's a fucking reliable source of information. I'm not saying the news doesn't have bias or gets it right 100% of the time. But Twitter... seriously? WTF.
...The local government feared that if news outlets were to report using signals coming from social media, there was a chance that fake, non-credible, and rumors would slip through the filter. It was absurd, to say the least...
Was it? Not trying to support censorship of any kind, especially the kind that China practices, but "social media" is well known to spew "fake, non-credible, rumors..."
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
>The local government feared that if news outlets were to report using signals coming from social media, there was a chance that fake, non-credible, and rumors would slip through the filter.
That's exactly what happens in the West. Vast piles of BS gets propagated as news on social media, leading to large percentages of the population believing untrue things to be true, more than they already do.
I think that they have indeed identified a problem. The solution, however, is worse than the problem. Vast piles of BS masquerading as news is bad, but government censorship is far worse.