China and Google-a cartoonist's view

As seen by Jeff Danziger, political cartoonist syndicated by the NYTimes worldwide

Two can play at that game

It seems though that the Chinese are getting a taste of their own medicine,

This from the FT

An unlikely cyberwar broke out yesterday when Iranian hackers attacked China's leading search engine and Chinese counterparts retaliated against Iranian websites.
In the morning, the web page of Baidu, China's largest internet search engine, was covered with an Iranian flag and other symbols and the words "Iranian Cyber Army".
Not long after, a rallying cry for retaliation emerged in Chinese blogs and in the afternoon, Chinese flags and nationalist slogans started appearing on websites registered in Iran.

And not before time

After four years of peaceful co existence with the Chinese government it appears as thoogh Google is finally having second thoughts.

The incident that has provoked it was according to a Google spokesman that it had detected a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China”.

It transpires that this sophisticated attack was the hacking of Googlemail accouns of known human rights activists.

Back in 2006,Google agreed to the Chinese government's request to censor the web creating a version of its search engine bearing China’s web suffix, “.cn.This meant that only information deemed fit by the Chinese authorities could be found in the search engine.

It has been a criticism of Google since but the company has always maintained that it was a small price to be allowed to operate in China effectively bringing its population into the global internet market.

Quite whether this incident may be a justification for pulling out,we must wait and see

Latest Chinese clampdown on the net

More evidence of China's crackdown on individuals using the internet.

This morning's FT reports that

From Monday, people registering a domain name in China would have to present a company seal and a business licence, the China Internet Network Information Center, a government-backed body, said in a statement.

According to the paper

Officials said the measure was part of a campaign to rein in pornographic content, but bloggers and internet activists interpreted it as a broader attempt to enforce internet censorship more heavily. "If they really enforce this, we will have to register our sites outside China," said one blogger.

Watch out as the Chinese move into the world's media

The Chinese are on the offensive,that's the media offensive before we get too worried.

Check out this article from the English version of Spiegal Online which profiles Yang Rui,who wants to "enhance China's prestige in the world.".

China is fighting the battle of the world's media on three fronts

1.The Internet, brutally monitored domestically but also used to broadcast CCTV-9 worldwide;

2.new English-language editions of party newspapers, intended to enhance China's reputation in the rest of the world;

3.The global development and acquisition of television networks.

According to the article

Yang embodies China's new ambitions. As Asia's leading power, China wants to become a global media player -- one focused above all on maintaining its own image. After the rebellion in Tibet last year and the public relations disaster surrounding the Olympic torch, Beijing recognized that it was no longer possible to retain control over its enormous empire only with police-state tactics directed at its own population.

What would you ask the Chinese President?

If you had 10 questions to ask Chinese President Hu Jintao about freedom of expression what would you ask.

Well with Barack Obama about to meet him RSF pose their 10 and here they are

1.Why are the websites of the US companies Twitter and Facebook blocked by the Chinese authorities?

2.Why do the Chinese authorities jam the programmes that are broadcast in Mandarin, Tibetan and Uyghur by the US-funded stations Radio Free Asia and Voice of America?

3.Is he going to pardon the hundreds of imprisoned journalists, intellectuals and bloggers, including Liu Xiaobo, Hu Jia, Shi Tao and Qi Chonghuai, who did nothing but express their opinions peacefully?

4.Why are foreign journalists, including American journalists, unable to visit Tibet without a permit?

5.Why is the Tibetan filmmaker Dhondhup Wangchen being tried on a charge of subversion when all he did was film interviews with Tibetans?

6.Why are international news agencies, including US news agencies, unable to sell their services directly to Chinese news media?

7.Why does the Propaganda Department routinely censor international news reports, including some aspects of the growing dispute with Iran over its nuclear programme?

8.Why do the Chinese security forces prevent journalists from freely doing investigative reporting in the area along the border with North Korea?

9.Why have the communication services (including Internet and telephone services) of the inhabitants of Xinjiang been blocked or kept under close surveillance for nearly four months?

10.Why are investigative journalists, especially those trying to cover business and corruption cases, still being harassed by the police and Propaganda department, a problem that led to the recent joint resignation of many of the editors and reporters employed by the leading magazine Caijing?

China to launch its own CNN

The Chinese competitor to CNN is to launcj at the end of this week.

China's state-run Xinhua News Agency has been putting together its own 24-hour satellite news channel for the past year and will begin broadcasting reports from a Chinese perspective next month to viewers around the world in conjunction with CCTV's existing English-language channel.

reports the Chosum Ilbo

Broadcasting from the Chinese capital an official said

"Just as Al Jazeera has an Arab point of view, CITV intends to report global news from a Chinese, rather than a Western, perspective,"

Ht-Adrian Monck

Unlocking China

Polis' Charlie Beckett is currently out in Shanghai and writes an interesting post on whether the new media business is changing the politics of China?

The media industry here appears to be booming but scratch under the surface and you realise that even the political authorities fear that there are too many obstacles to innovation. This is both a source of concern and hope

.he writes and continues

the journalism school students and staff talk about how they are being paid for by the state to create journalists who will go out to serve the state. They describe it as accepting 10% censorship in return for doing the rest of their jobs.

Can this work with new media? Well, the answer I am getting is that it doesn’t and that the state itself recognises that.

Murdoch calls for media freedom in China

It was nice to see that Rupert Murdoch is calling for media freedoms in China.

As the FT reports he asked its leaders to

allow a more open media sector, saying Beijing needed to compete in a global "marketplace of ideas" just as it had opened its industrial economy up three decades ago.

adding that

"In this new world, China will also have to compete in the marketplace of ideas - the media. That's a noisy, messy, colourful market,

Of cause cynics may see this and his embrace of the Chinese premier as another cynical attempt to get a hold on the Chinese media market potentially the bigest in the world.

But I will for the moment applaud his call for freedoms

Celebrating 60 years

China is celebrating 60 years of its communist regime but as Reporters without frontiers points out

The past 60 years have been difficult for journalists as the Maoist regime wanted to turn the media into nothing more than propaganda tools. Journalists and bloggers nowadays are no longer locked in a totalitarian grip but the censorship has never stopped. The Communist Party continues to exercise direct control over the news agency Xinhua, newspapers such as People's Daily, and the national broadcaster CCTV.

Why Chinese censorship can backfire

China is once again meddling in the internet firewall this time blocking You Tube.

The measure follows the release of video footage of the aftermath of last years riots in Lhasa which shows dissidents being handcuffed and clubbed by Chinese police.

The measure appears to be backfiring on the Chinese.

As Austin Ramzy writes at Swampland,whilst watching the video

I was uncertain about the accuracy of the images. While the initial beatings seemed real, it was hard to make a call about hospital footage of the man with the horrific wounds. How many people, after all, know what rotted flesh looks like?

So all the Chinese have done is given the footage greater publicity than it may have merited.

posts about what sites are blocked or unblocked can attract huge amounts of web traffic.

You can access the video here-make up your own mind

As journalism jobs decline here is an area in the world which is expanding

Via Editors Weblog

An opportunity for journalists in China according to Thr.com Asia which quotes from the South China morning post

Beijing's plans to spend about $6.6 billion to improve China's image with foreign viewers

adding that

In a New Year's essay for the Communist Party's main ideological journal, "Seeking Truth," national propaganda chief Liu Yunshan wrote: "It has become an urgent strategic task for us to make our communication capability match our international status."

Three areas of the media are to become recipients of $2.2m each,Central China Television, the Xinhua News Agency and the People's Daily.

The Xinhua News Agency is rumoured to be setting up a 24 hour operation to rival Al Jazeera and will be increasing its overseas bureaus to 186 from the present 100

So much for Press freedom

Coverage of the arrest of ITV correspondent John Ray who was covering a protest by several foreign activists who unfurled a pro-Tibet banner near Beijing’s main Olympic zone

10 things about the Chinese internet.

Via Huffington Post.

An intersting piece by Jeffrey Wasserstrom and Kate Merkel Hess who refute some of the myths that are circulating about the internet in China.

Fisrtly they say that the common fact that it will swiftly lead to a freer and more open society is not correct.It,they say

" hasn't happened. China's still run by a Communist Party that takes harsh measures against organizations that threaten its hold on power."

however

the Chinese public sphere has become a more freewheeling, interesting and chaotic arena for expressions of opinion than it was. This isn't all due to the Internet (crusading print journalists and activists have also done their part), but bloggers calling attention to official corruption or mocking government policies have definitely helped alter the political landscape.

Furthermore it is misleading to think of the net as being only important in terms of dissidents and protest

Often, the politically significant things happening online involve forms of communication, such as efforts to call attention to corrupt acts by local officials, that dovetail with policies that are promoted or at least given lip service by the central authorities. In many cases, these take the form of satirical discussions, which only gradually move toward anything like a "dissident"
position

and a lot of internet use is not political

Most Chinese Internet cafes are packed with students playing online video games, not checking out political websites. Online chat rooms are packed. Online commerce is growing rapidly. Online stock trading has taken off. And after the Sichuan earthquake, Chinese donated millions of dollars online.

What the Monday media sections are saying

In the Guardian Jeff Jarvis says that Newsrooms are entering a hub-and-spoke future.Touring the BBC with its head of News Peter Horrocks,he tells us

He is making all his top managers rotate in that chair to immerse them in the demands of news in any medium. Next to the multimedia desk is a hub that manages content from BBC News resources - standard stuff - though now its contributors are organised by topic rather than medium

but

in the corner is something I think every newsroom will soon have: a media wire, which in Horrocks' words is a tasting operation that ingests and assesses content from all over to feed to any product and medium. There is a separate user-generated-content hub that does likewise with amateur content. (I'd argue these two will have to merge, as the line between professional and amateur, reporter and witness continues to blur.) This curatorial function, editing the world, is critical in a news ecology that pushes us to do what we do best and link to the rest.

The BBC gets a lot of attention in the paper with its top story asking Is the BBC hideously White City? claiming

Several in the broadcast industry agree that it has become more London-centric but suggest the issues are difficult to change in the short term. Several, including Andrew Marr, believe the corporation is trying hard to redress the balance

however

One prominent broadcaster suggests the Trust is simply running scared of powerful political pressure groups. The birth of the commission itself underlines the close connection between politics and broadcasting, at least in Scotland

The Independent looks at the Sichuan earthquake and its effects on the Chinese media.

Suddenly, Chinese reporters are asking tough questions about possible government corruption, journalists have been ignoring state-issued orders in order to get to the scene of the disaster, and footage of broken bodies and futile rescue efforts was shown live on TV. This is a startling change in a country often depicted by foreign media and governments as an authoritarian, press-belittling monolith.

Peter Wilby in the Guardian looks at the trend towards newspaper comment and comments himself that

Now the papers are full of them, and it has been estimated that, across the British media, at least 120 writers produce regular, broadly political columns. A political and media landscape without them seems to us inconceivable. Yet such columnists are by no means universal. In several European countries, political commentary comes almost exclusively from academics or other policy experts.

In the Independent meanwhile Stephen Glover takes a look at the coverage of David Davis in the media and in particular that of the Sun

it is possible that some other people are about to make a mistake that could surpass Mr Davis's. I am thinking of Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Sun, Rebekah Wade, its editor, and Kelvin MacKenzie, a columnist for the paper as well as a former editor, who is thinking of opposing Mr Davis in the by-election at Haltemprice and Howden.

and points out that

In democracies, governments do not own newspapers, though they try to manipulate them, and sometimes succeed. For their part, newspapers and their proprietors do not own governments, though they may also try, and Mr Murdoch has got closer than most to succeeding. It is no idle convention that the executive should keep out of the media, and the media out of the executive, but the essence of our democratic system. In one-party states, by contrast, government and press are one and the same

Beijing on my mind

Over at Open House Adrian Hamilton is not happy about the Beeb's dcision to devote this year's Reith Lectures to China

Is there no end to the kow-towing to China these days? Well not in the BBC. The decision to devote its sixtieth anniversary Reith Lectures to the subject, and to place them in the hands of a historian (Jonathan Spence) is typical of the way the British establishment (and indeed the establishments of the US and most of Europe) is bending its knee to the coming power

he says

Well I'm sorry but I don;t agree.The more we get to know and understand about China,the more power that we have to change things.

What the media commentators are saying

Jane Martinson at the Guardian takes a look at the BBC Trust and asks

Was it in the charter that the BBC Trust should be run like a bus service? We wait all year for a review and now there are three arriving at once.

adding

No organisation would choose to spend its first year dealing with a royal row and an internal revolt over restructuring that looked nastier than any in its 81-year history. So pity the poor Trust employees, who are currently dealing with the fruit of all those detailed analytical reviews started in earlier, halcyon days.

In the same paper with the Olympics fast aproaching,Phil Harding asks

As 20,000 journalists get ready for the Beijing Olympics, just how much freedom will they have to report what is happening on and off the track?

and reminds us

In January 2007 the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that accredited foreign journalists would be free to travel in China, outside Tibet and the Muslim western region of Xinjiang, without official permission. In practice, this has only partly happened. In the last fortnight access for the foreign media to the disaster areas of the Sichuan earthquake has been relatively unrestricted. But during the Tibet disturbances in March more than 40 journalists were turned away from covering protests in neighbouring regions, and some were detained

Staying with the subject of China Matthew Norman in the Independent

can't recall,can't recall ,IN ALL the years of observing British newspapers, a change of heart as startling and touching as the one at The Times, which has executed a quite dizzying volte-face on the vexing issue of China.

According to Donald Trelford in the Independent

Newspapers are a unique kind of business, someone ventured over dinner the other night: "In no other business do the owners and managers have no control over the product."

The paper has a feature on BBC Journalist Matt Frei who for

For six years has been attending White House press conferences, as the BBC's Washington correspondent and more recently as the face of BBC World News America. And never once has he been invited to ask a question of George W Bush.

Chinese media site launches English version

A Chinese news site is launching a English version.(Via Editors Weblog)

Sina.com has luanched its English service following demand for news of the Sichuan earthquake.

At the moment the new site is primarily focused on coverage of the earthquake tragedy. However, Sina English is also making plans for the long terrm.
"We intend to make this site a window for international communities to have an easy access to China related information and to have better understanding about modern China," said Sina president and chief executive Charles Chao

BBC owns up to picture gaffe

The BBC has owned up to a rather embarassing gaffe last night.

Writing on the editor's blog,Peter Horrocks says

Last night the BBC broadcast a still which we said showed dozens of bodies lying in the waterfront of the Irrawaddy delta. We have since discovered that the picture was actually taken in Aceh, Sumatra following the tsunami of 2004. This was a mistake, and we will be correcting it on all BBC output where the still was used.

Tips for China on how to handle the Western media

The Singapore senior minister, Lee Kuan Yew, has given some advice to China over how to handle the Western media

1. Give access to the Western reporters;

2. Don’t over-react to their negative coverage, just deal with them on their own terms, as businesses with bottom lines to protect;

3. Focus on building your reputation among the world’s decision makers, who will see things differently from the Western media. Over time, Singapore's experience shows, media coverage will get more nuanced and respectful.

This is what he says about Tibet

You take Tibet. Who started it? It was started by the Tibetans. The March incident, March 14. I was reading Jonathan Eyal who writes for our Straits Times. He was a commentator from London. He is from I think Chatham House, a very thoughtful man. He said if they had called in the newspapers right from the word go, and said, look, this is what happened. The Economist correspondent was in Lhasa when it happened and wrote about it. He was favorable to them. The rioters started killing people and they were not reacting. The orders were not to shoot, not to take on the rioters because they didn't want trouble. Had they engaged the west, all this would have turned out differently.

Via Sun Bin blog