Chinese government continues to misunderstand what press freedom means

David Bandurski at China Media Project continues his excellent record of poking holes in the falsity of the words and deeds of the Chinese government when it comes to dealing with the media and the concept of press freedom.

His latest contribution — “Media control” in the United States — looks at a blog by an unknown writer who — conveniently — says the opinions are his own. (But the widespread coverage it has been given say otherwise.)

China has learned that international reports — such as the New York Times report on how the families of Chinese leaders amassed a fortune — have a serious play in domestic politics.

Rather than deal head on with the issue of corruption and nepotism, the Chinese government instead decided to twist facts and outright lie to show that the U.S. press is not free and is really controlled by the government and financial elite.

And the fun part is that this commentator from Beijing agrees with the US Tea Party:

[The US media] are particularly inclined to draw their information from liberal and reform-inclined special interest groups

 

China steps up war on foreign correspondents

The rulers in Beijing have never liked having Western reporters in their country. Those pesky reporters just keep asking too many questions and refuse to just accept the government press releases as gospel truth.

In the wake of the November 13 Bloomberg and New York Times reports on how family members of leading government officials got rich, the government of China has been withholding visa renewals — normally a routine thing — for Bloomberg and NYT journalists.

Here is the latest from Foreign Policy: Is Beijing about to Boot the New York Times?

There have been previous kerfuffles, such as when the Times reported on the wealth accumulated by then prime minister Wen Jiabao in 2012.

Bloomberg got into trouble when it disclosed the family wealth of former party boss Bo Xilai and Chinese President Xi Jinping. In retaliation, the governemnt ordered local financial institutions to not buy Bloomberg terminals, which are the main profit-generating engine for the news organization. Censors also blocked its website.

The Foreign Policy article notes:

If Beijing actually does plan to expel both bureaus it would constitute the government’s biggest move against foreign reporters at least since the upheaval following the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. Evan Osnos, a staff writer for the New Yorker and a long-time China correspondent, called this recent move “the Chinese government’s most dramatic attempt to insulate itself from scrutiny in the thirty-five years since China began opening to the world.” Paul Mooney, a longtime China-based chronicler of that country’s human rights abuses, had his visa rejected in early November, in another sign of tightening for foreign correspondents in China. Reuters, Bloomberg, and the New York Times “don’t have the ability to influence the Chinese government,” said Mooney. “I think we really need to have some kind of action. Maybe against media executives in China, or officials — to give the message that this is not acceptable.”

Foreign Policy quotes New York Times’ reporters as saying if the paper is kicked out of China, reporting would continue from Taiwan and Hong Kong. While not ideal situations, there is still a lot of information that can be gleaned from China in these two locations where press freedom is respected.

 

Human Rights Day posting removed by Chinese censors

Weibo got nervous about a posting on Dec. 10 about Human Rights Day and so it removed it, even though the posting said nothing about China.

The China Media Project reports a post by Old Mu on Various Topics, a media executive with more than 1.7 million followers on  Weibo, was deleted early morning Dec. 10, International Human Rights Day.

CMP posted the “offending” item:

[Today is a big day] December 10 — World Human Rights Day. Every life is precious, regardless of whether one is rich or poor. No one’s rights can be infringed, whether they are high-level officials or ordinary people. No one’s right to free speech can be infringed, no matter whether they are famous or obscure. On World Human Rights Day, let us embrace equality, embrace human rights! Today, let us salute all those brave people who have sacrificed in the pursuit of human rights. Let us salute all the brave people who fight for human rights.

Read more at: World Human Rights Day post deleted

Guess discussing things such as freedom of speech are just too sensitive for the leadership in Beijing, even on Human Rights Day.

Oh, and the theme for this year’s Human Rights Day was “Working for your Rights.”

WordPress goes to bat for blogger in censorship case

Real quick from PBS MediaShift: WordPress Goes to Court to Defend Censored Bloggers by Parker Higgins.

The blogging platform WordPress.com has taken the unusual — and welcome — step of going to court to defend its users against bogus copyright claims aimed at silencing their speech on the platform. Automattic, WordPress’s parent company, has joined two separate lawsuits that seek to hold the would-be censors of legitimate lawful speech accountable for their attempts.

WordPress is suing Straight Pride UK for sending bogus takedowns.

One of the targeted bloggers, Oliver Hotham, is a U.K. student journalist who wrote about a group called Straight Pride UK. That group issued a press statement explaining its concerns about the “homosexual agenda” and holding up Vladimir Putin as symbol of straight pride. When Hotham’s article quoting that press statement started to get attention, he was slapped with a takedown notice and told his quotes constituted copyright infringement.

The other case involved a website called “Retraction Watch,” run by two noted science journalists. The site tracks instances of published scientific papers being criticized or retracted, for reasons ranging from honest error to falsified data, and covering some controversial situations that may be embarrassing for the scientists involved.

Rest of story

Biden chastises China for media policy

We have all known for a long time that the rulers in China do not like to have people looking into their business. Along those lines we also know that the basic rule is that the media need to be tightly controlled.

Unfortunately for the boys and girls in Beijing, once they opened up their country to the world, they also opened themselves to global scrutiny by the Western media.

One of the ways Beijing tries to keep prying eyes away is to deny Western journalists visas to work in China.

The use of the visa process is not unique to China, but they way they do it is typical of dictatorships trying to keep control of the message.

Recently China has been ticked off at The New York Times and Bloomberg after these two news organizations published articles about how the families of the ruling elite got wealthy. To retaliate over good and honest journalism, Beijing is holding up the normally routine process of renewing the visas for journalists from these news services.

On his recent trip to China, VP Biden took Beijing to task for their petty and childish actions.

“Innovation thrives where people breathe freely, speak freely, are able to challenge orthodoxy, where newspapers can report the truth without fear of consequences,” Mr. Biden declared.

One of the nice things about the way Pres. Carter inserted human rights into the foreign policy dialog is that U.S. government officials feel obliged to speak out against political and press repression even as they work to have closer relations with countries such as China.