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.

Comments

That's Right

[TechyImmigrant]

>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.

Re:That's Right

[Sir_Eptishous]

You are correct.

Also, the interesting thing is, back in the late 90s to early 2000s when large numbers of people in the US started getting online, the slowly emerging conventional wisdom was "don't believe everything you see/read/hear on the internet".

I would say part of that is from the fact that at that time, many websites, blogs, email chains, etc looked pretty crude and not "professional" and slick like everything now is.

Fast forward to today, where ultra slick "social" sites and apps have made the big lies more likely to be believed, and the truth harder to get to.

Re:That's Right

[phantomfive]

China needs to solve this problem more urgently because of their chosen form of government (let's leave aside which is 'right' and 'wrong' for now, and concede them the right of self-determination). False news reports give an opening for unscrupulous men to build a following and oppose the government based on false reports. This causes chaos and death (look throughout history.....the worst part about having kings is when a war of succession happens......there's chaos, people die needlessly, then it goes back to about the same as it was before. The exception of course is when the king was really bad, but that won't be reported with false news reports).

So that is the problem the Chinese government needs to solve. Keep order and harmony, because for the vast majority of people, it's better than chaos. (Look at what happened in Egypt recently when they had their new government.....lots of violence, then nothing really changed. Replacing Mubarak was probably a mistake, but some people paid for it with their lives).

With a different form of government, unscrupulous men can start a campaign of lies, and build a following, and if he's convincing enough, even make it into power as president. But all this will happen without real violence (that is, violence does not lead to power and political enemies don't need to 'disappear'), and the system is designed with power balances to prevent things from getting too messed up, even with a lousy president.

Is this really good or bad?

[kbonin]

Part of me wants to joke about China continuing to move to its own walled garden to control information flow. But then I think about the abysmal state of the media in the US, how most all major news organizations are now for-profit puppets pushing propaganda designed to enrich their owners, even to the point of demonstrating complicity in what would have been a major scandal (you see proof of election fraud and you fire the people collecting the data proving its occurring? really???), and I wonder if anything of value was lost. Media has gone from the "fourth branch of government", providing a historically critical check and balance, to yet another tool of those pulling the strings behind government. I wonder how many people realize the extent to which worldwide institutions are failing...