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

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

Nine press freedoms before the Olympics

With one hundred days togo,Reporters without frontiers has issued today 9 press freedom demands as the countdown to the Olympics begins

In full

1. Release all journalists and Internet users detained in China for exercising their right to information.

2. Allow the foreign press freedom of movement, including in Tibet and Xinjiang, and freedom to interview whomever they wish, both until and beyond October 2008.

3. Disband the Publicity Department (the former Propaganda Department), which exercises daily control over content in the Chinese press.

4. End the jamming of foreign radio stations.

5. End the blocking of thousands of news and information websites based abroad.

6. Suspend the "11 Commandments of the Internet," which lead to content censorship and self-censorship on websites.

7. End the blacklisting of journalists and human rights activists, which prevents them from visiting China.

8. Lift the ban on Chinese media using foreign news agency video footage and news reports without permission.

9. Legalize independent organisations of journalists and human rights activists.

Spare a thought for the journalists on the world's worse road

If you are struggling with getting a story for end of term assignments spare a thought for two Reuters journalists Chris Buckley and David Gray who are travelling to Chengdu in Sichuan Province in China’s south-west to try and get into areas where they had heard that violent demonstrations regarding Tibet had occurred

They describe the world's worst road on their assignment

two foot of snow and lots and lots of ice. Our inexperienced driver had to
go back and get chains after we started sliding backwards - not enjoyable when u
look over the edge of the road which now had a drop of some 600 metres.

But it gets worse

The pot-holes this time were triple the size and a much much more often than the previous WWR. The police presence was at least ten times that of the previous WWR, meaning our ‘ducking down’ skills had to be repeated more and more often the further we got into the troubled areas. But to top it all off, the whole experience lasted four times longer than the previous WWR trip. Total time in the car was nearly 36 hours, and when your driver snores for 4 of those hours barely 3 feet from your head, its not very enjoyable

BBC back online in China

A minor bit of good news on the Tibet front.

Guardian media is reporting this morning that the BBC website is no longer being firewalled by the Chinese authorities.

The Chinese government has never officially confirmed that it blocked traffic to the site, but for years web users in China have been served an error message when attempting to access the BBC and other western news sites.

But

the Chinese-language site still appears to be blocked. Users are served a page that says "the connection has been reset" when attempting to access pages, giving the appearance of a technical error with the BBC's site.

The piece also notes that Guardian editor Alan Rushbridger wrote to the Chinese ambassador in London complaining of

"an act of deliberate and wholly unacceptable censorship".

What the media columnists are saying

The Guardian looks this morning at the media coverage of the Tibet crisis.

Steven Sarkur reports on a familiar aspect of China

The jammers, the plug-pullers and the internet blockers are hard at work in Beijing. The strategy is crude but effective and this is how it works. As I watched my colleagues on BBC World report on the riots in Tibet two weeks ago, the television in my Beijing hotel suddenly went dark. No test card, no patriotic music, just a blank screen and silence. When the Tibet report was done, back came the picture.

Pointing out that in the next few months

hundreds of journalists will head to China in the run-up to the Beijing Games. As the last couple of weeks have illustrated, the Olympics represents not just an opportunity for China to showcase its achievements and global status, but also for opponents of the dictatorship to garner unprecedented attention. Covering the former will be straightforward; reporting the latter, and putting it in context, will be anything but.

And in the same paper,Jonathan Watts tells of the hardships of repoting

The pitfalls are enormous. Political sensitivities over Tibet can hardly be greater than in Olympics year. The two sides - the Chinese leadership in Beijing and the Dalai Lama's government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India - are projecting vastly different interpretations of what is happening. Casualty figures, arrests, riot-damage and paramilitary violence are all disputed. The only way to be sure of anything is to see it with your own eyes. But even that has been impossible for most journalists most of the time.

Steven Glover at the Indy looks at the controversial remarks of Bill Deedes over the Barclay's brothers and the Telegraph's handling of it

Coming from anyone this would be inflammatory. Coming from Bill, a natural courtier who had cheerfully adapted to previous changes of regime in journalism and politics without demur, it was absolutely amazing. The Daily Telegraph had a choice. It could denounce the book, and in particular his remarks about the Barclays, as the ravings of a senile old fool. Or it could buy it for serialisation, ensuring that no other newspaper would run the embarrassing bits. Wisely, it did the latter, paying a handsome sum for first, second and third rights, so that no one else could have a further bite.

The newspaper'shandling of another incident is frowned on by Peter Wilby in the Guardian

Most newspapers virtually ignored the extraordinary apology by Express Newspapers' four national titles to the parents of Madeleine McCann. I am not surprised. The sin to which the Express titles confessed - presenting gossip and hearsay as hard news - has become the staple of downmarket journalism and is infecting upmarket papers too. It is accompanied by casual cruelty and a highly judgmental tone.

and the PCC comes in for critisism

The PCC also lacks teeth: it has no power to fine papers, call for resignations, or act without a specific complaint from a directly aggrieved party.

Andrew Keen writes that

Today, we are all teetering on the precipice of life after television – our media habits being radically transformed by devices like the notebook PC, the video mobile phone and the high-resolution iPod touch. New platforms like the internet and mobile are breaking television's monopoly on the distribution of home entertainment. Even today's television – with its set-top box, its pay-per-view programming and web-browsing functionality – no longer resembles the old telly that we grew up with.

but says

It is hard to think what comes next.

Finally it is 40 years since the birth of satirical comedy and Andrew Fettis in the Independent says

Many people are claimed to have changed the face of British comedy. Forty years ago, aged only 27, David Frost actually did.

And Frost is interviewed in the Guardian

Are there any interviewees who have eluded him? "I had been trying to get Fidel Castro forever, really. I don't know how ill he is now, but I would love to interview Castro before he goes," he says. "And at the moment, the new Russian leader is somewhat interesting."
He also wonders what he would do if he secured an interview with Osama bin Laden. "Your citizen's duty and your journalist's duty clash. You should try and carry out a citizen's arrest really, but you might not last very long. If you did the interview and conspired not to reveal where it was, that would be a disservice to freedom."