China blocks foreign websites again, and the already limited freedom of public opinion dissipates in a flash.

Starting from December, some foreign websites that had been open to the public during the Olympics have been blocked again. Among these websites, Ming Pao News and Asiaweek cannot be visited in mainland China since December 2. Other websites that have been blocked include BBC Chinese, VOA Chinese, and the Hong Kong and Taiwan pages of Youtube. The limited freedom of information that had been allowed during the Olympics has now disappeared in an instant.

According to reports, domestic Chinese Internet media have also been targeted. Besides Sina, all the columns and editorials on web portals will be rectified. The reason for this is to deal with possible outbreaks of economic, political, and public security issues in the country in 2009. The traditional media most likely cannot escape from this rectification. Furthermore, Jiang Yiping, who is in charge of the Southern Metropolis Daily, the “Most Daring Voice” in the Chinese media, allegedly encountered a “Personnel Adjustment” in the past few days, which also has to do with the current rectification.

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Internet control, Olympics media, press freedom
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China’s latest food safety problem, involving the addition of the industrial chemical melamine to milk to cheat in quality tests, has caused public outrage and put the spotlight back on deficiencies in industry oversight and weak regulatory bodies.

China has already said the city government in Shijiazhuang, home to the Sanlu Group whose contaminated milk sparked a recall now spread worldwide, sat on a report from the company about the tainting for more than a month, while Beijing hosted the Olympic Games.

“Please can the government increase control and coordination of the media, to create a good environment for the recall of the company’s problem products,” the People’s Daily cited the letter from Sanlu as saying.

“This is to avoid whipping up the issue and creating a negative influence in society,” it added.

Read also a Los Angeles Times editorial on this issue, and a previous CDT post about the first lawsuit brought against Sanlu by parents of a sick baby.

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Post tags: media censorship, Olympics media, Sanlu, videos
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“I think when the time comes, we will tell everyone what the arrangement will be,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. “But I want to reiterate to everyone that the spirit of opening up will continue.”

The changes, which allowed reporters to interview Chinese citizens without government approval, were part of the country’s pledge to increase media freedom, which helped Beijing be picked as host of the 2008 Olympics.

Jiang’s statement was the most explicit comment yet that Beijing intends to allow the current regulations to expire. A Chinese official had hinted last December that the new reporting rules could be extended.

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Post tags: foreign media regulations, Olympics media
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Analysts say global corporations seeking a foothold in this potentially huge market have begun to notice CCTV, whose audience is vastly larger than every major television network in the United States and Europe combined.

So, while NBC is celebrating record audiences of more than 30 million viewers in the United States, CCTV is smashing ratings records everywhere. The opening ceremony had an average audience of nearly half a billion people, and 842 million watched at least a minute of it, according to CSM Media Research, based here. More than 80 percent of Chinese households have tuned in to some broadcasts, guaranteeing the $2 billion company a huge pot of advertising gold.

CCTV paid about $17 million for exclusive broadcast rights in China but could reap $394 million in Olympic advertising revenue, according to Group M, a media company that tracks television advertising revenue here. By comparison, NBC paid $894 million for broadcast rights in the United States and is expected to garner more than $1 billion in ad revenue.

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Post tags: CCTV, Olympics media
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David Bandurski, a media analyst and reporter for the Far Eastern Economic Review based in Hong Kong, says Chinese reporters at the Games aren’t getting anything like the relative freedom of Western reporters.

Nor, he says, did they expect it.

“Chinese reporters understood from the beginning, they understood seven years ago when these promises were made, that these promises were not about them at all,” Mr Bandurski told Radio Australia’s Connect Asia program.

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Post tags: Olympics impact, Olympics media, press freedom
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More questions came up. Why were the foreign media “politicizing” the Games? In response it was pointed out that they were politicizing our “politicizing”, along with just about everything else. What could be done to improve the coverage? Lots of advice there: more original reporting, less cherry-picking; more full translations, fewer slanted excerpts; fewer one-sided polemics, more balanced array of commentary. The editors were open to most of those suggestions. But original reporting of foreign affairs (at the whim of the Party propaganda department and Foreign Ministry) would be hard, they suggested. What storylines would we be following? For one, the U.S.-China medal race. They liked that idea.

How did our feedback affect their Olympic coverage, if at all? No idea yet. It’s hard to tell. But our Chinese colleagues in the Newsweek bureau have been helping us keep up with Global Times. Here we’ve translated a smattering of excerpts printed in its pages over the past two weeks.

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Post tags: Global Times, media conditions, Olympics media
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Now that the games have actually started, a viewer can find live broadcasts of everything from archery to volleyball all day long. Television anchors are endlessly cuing up musical montages of Chinese gold medal performances in weightlifting, shooting, gymnastics, and diving. When not broadcasting events, Chinese programmers are filling the airwaves with features such as “Mothers Who Are Also Olympic Competitors” and “Kids Who Have Shaved the Olympics Logo Into Their Heads.” Enthusiastic coverage is of course not unique to the Chinese—I remember watching my share of slo-mo U.S. medalist montages set to Whitney Houston’s “One Moment in Time.” But what’s on television in China right now shows what happens when you combine tight state control with typically overwrought, patriotic sports coverage. CCTV is like NBC on steroids … and growth hormone, and EPO, and albuterol.

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Post tags: CCTV, Olympics media
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IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said journalists should not be prevented from doing their jobs, a day after John Ray of London-based ITV News said he was wrestled to the ground and briefly held by police who apparently mistook him for a protester.

“The IOC does disapprove of any attempts to hinder a journalist who is going about doing his job seemingly within the rules and regulations,” Davies told a daily press briefing. “This, we hope, has been addressed. We don’t want to see this happening again.”

The incident raised concerns that Beijing was not fulfilling its pledge to give foreign media unrestricted access to report on the games.

Meanwhile, Tim Johnson recounts an exchange between Davies and journalist Alex Thompson of Channel Four News after she failed to answer his question: “Given that China got these games largely on making promises on human rights and press freedom, and given that the Chinese government has lied through its teeth about keeping those promises, is the IOC in any way embarrassed?”:

Thompson: I don’t think anyone in this room, if I may speak, I may be stepping out of line, but I don’t think anybody thinks you’ve answered the question. Is the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government not keeping those promises?

Davies: We’re very pleased with how the organizers are putting on a good sporting event. That’s what this is. The IOC’s role and remit is to bring sport and the Olympic values to this country. That is what is happening, and the organizers have put on an operationally sound games for the athletes. This is an event, first and foremost, for the athletes, and the athletes are giving us extremely positive feedback about how they see these games being held for them.

Thompson: Well, Giselle, we’re certainly not getting anywhere are we? Let’s try it once more time. Is the IOC embarrassed about the Chinese government’s not keeping promises on both press freedom and human rights? One more chance.

Davies: Well, I think probably your colleagues in the room would like to have a chance at questions as well. I think I’ve answered your question.

Read Richard Spencer of The Telegraph’s take on the press conference as well as a full transcript courtesy of the BOCOG. Read also about restrictions placed on domestic journalists covering the Games, via the CPJ blog. For a list of the specific restrictions, see this translation from The Age.

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Post tags: IOC, Olympics media, press freedom
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On Wednesday, a British television journalist was detained by police as he tried to report on a pro-Tibet protest near the green, where protesters handcuffed themselves together and hung a “Free Tibet” banner from a bridge. John Ray of London-based ITV News was grabbed by police and put into a car. He was released after proving he was a journalist.

International Olympic Committee spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau said the committee was checking into what happened. “The IOC’s position is clear: the media must be free to report on the Olympic Games,” she said in a statement.

While Beijing vowed before the Olympics to give the foreign media unrestricted access to China during the games, Ray’s detention was just the latest in a string of recent confrontations between Chinese authorities and international journalists, adding to worries that Beijing has reverted to the tight controls it normally keeps over the press.

Domestic media are also being prevented from reporting on sensitive stories related to the Games, according to this report from NDTV. Read also The propaganda bureau’s 21-point plan from The Age.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: foreign media, Olympics media, press freedom
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To say Beijing is eager to welcome foreign guests to the Olympics may be the understatement of the century. The new airport terminal features a welcome robot, there are “welcome booths” on just about every downtown street, the names of the Olympic mascots spell “Welcome to Beijing” in Chinese. If you’re not careful, you may be walking down a normal street only to find yourself surrounded by eager volunteers clad in blue shirts who point out everything you ever wanted to know about Beijing and plenty more you didn’t. In the Olympic Village, where the athletes live, friends say that the enthusiasm and attentiveness of the volunteers borders on harassment.

The enthusiasm is understandable. Everyone keeps talking about the “100-year dream,” and in a sense, Beijing has been waiting to host this—its international coming-out—since 1842 or so. That’s the year China lost the Opium War and started a 160-year-long search for respect. Much to the country’s chagrin, it still isn’t getting any.

The Western media have arrived en masse to China’s ball: lots of senior journalists, in sloppy dress, interested either in their own athletes or in writing their own big “China piece.” (Foreign guests are here, too, but fewer than Beijing had hoped for, thanks in part to self-defeating visa policies.) Not surprisingly, the stories written about China by foreign journalists are rarely on topics China might have hoped for.

Update: An article in Harper’s gives another perspective, that NBC coverage of China is in fact too friendly especially with the use of a hired commentator who works with Henry Kissinger:

When Lauer asked Ramo if the Games would change China, he replied, “I think China is changed irrevocably after these 17 days. It is a full aware part of the international community and they know that their behavior in that community is going to have to be different than in the past.”

So who is Ramo? According to a recent piece in the Albuquerque Journal, he “works as a managing director and partner at the Beijing office of Kissinger Associates.” Which explains a lot.

Shouldn’t NBC identify Ramo as an employee of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is one of the Americans closest to the Chinese leadership and whose business involves opening doors for Western companies seeking to do business in China?

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China coverage, Olympics media, Tim Wu
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