China Digital Times

China news tagged with: press freedom (231)

• New China News Agency: Guardian of Media Ethics

  

  From the Wall Street Journal’s China Journal blog:

  China’s Xinhua News Agency is lecturing Western media outlets for ignoring risks, covering up lies, protecting the powerful and clouding the truth.

  The context: China’s state news agency says its newsgathering efforts will be an essential pillar in a reordered global financial landscape, since a “monopoly” of Western media shirked their duty to protect the system.

  “I will underscore today that the information asymmetry and the non-objective, unfair and one-sided information order as another reason for the financial crisis,” Xinhua Vice President Lu Wei told bankers and policymakers gathered in Shanghai on Saturday (report in Chinese here).

  In his spirited presentation, Mr. Lu echoed other conference delegates that the global recession resulted from lax regulators and greedy financiers, and he also laid fresh charges: “Under a situation where news gathering was monopolized, communication power was controlled, risks were hidden, the truth covered-up, market information was disseminated to represent selected groups, falsities clouded investor judgment and brought finance to the abyss,” Mr. Lu said.

  » Read more
  • May 19, 2009 11:33 AM

• Sichuan Quake Zone Reporters Assaulted, Accused of Incitement (Updated)

  

  [See below for updates from 5/7/09]

  As the government finally announces an official death toll, saying that 5,335 school children were killed in the May 12, 2008 earthquake, several foreign journalists reporting from the earthquake zone have been harassed or detained as the quake’s one-year anniversary approaches. [Ai Weiwei, who is independently investigating the number of students killed, has given a preliminary estimate that is higher than the government's.] Jamil Anderlini, a Financial Times correspondent who was attacked by local officials, reports:

  In separate incidents on Tuesday a Finnish television crew and a Financial Times reporter were attacked near Fuxin number two primary school while trying to interview parents of the 126 children killed when the poorly constructed school collapsed.

  In another incident on Wednesday a correspondent for the Irish Times was detained by police for almost an hour for trying to meet parents of hundreds of children who died in another school collapse in the town of Juyuan. He was released but told foreign reporters were forbidden from interviewing grieving parents during the “sensitive” period around the anniversary of the earthquake, which killed nearly 90,000 people.

  Several other media organisations said their staff had been harassed and detained in the earthquake zone by police and government officials, in spite of recently introduced laws that supposedly allow foreign journalists to go anywhere in China and speak to any willing interview subject

  The Independent also reports:

  “Private interviews are forbidden.” the police officer told me. “This is a sensitive time.” His words, uttered yesterday at a barracks in Juyuan, a town devastated by the earthquake in Sichuan province last year, made absolutely clear why I had just been detained by police for doing my job as a reporter. They also showed there is a total shutdown on media coverage of China’s “sensitive” areas, despite a much applauded initial openness in allowing foreign journalists to witness the aftermath of the quake. Since then, the voices of angry parents who lost their children in the wreckage have been silenced because public anger over shoddily-built schools is seen as politically destabilising.

  The Time China blog quotes a statement from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China expressing concern over the attacks:

  We have received three separate, confirmed reports today of journalists being physically attacked in Sichuan. Nobody has been hurt but equipment has been broken. The details are below. Given the violence of the encounters and an apparent increasing frequency of reports, it seems the situation is becoming more volatile and we advise extra caution when visiting these areas.

  Human Rights Watch issued a statement condemning the harassment of parents of children who died and of activists investigating the earthquake death toll.

  Read all of CDT’s coverage of the Sichuan earthquake.
  
  Updated 5/7/09: Chinese officials responded to the claims of harassment by foreign reporters in the quake zone by accusing the journalists of incitement. From the Financial Times:

  Mr Hou denied that any reporters had been harassed or detained in recent weeks and said the government had not received any complaints, despite many accounts from foreign journalists of official interference in their work.

  “A very small number of [foreign] media and journalists did not go to the earthquake zone to conduct interviews but to incite trouble and we have proof of this,” he said. “[They] didn’t go to interview the masses in the earthquake zone on the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the earthquake zone but to ask [the people], ‘Why don’t you organise yourselves and fight the government?’ ”

  He did not say which foreign media were involved and did not offer proof.

  The Financial Times report includes a video report from Jamil Anderlini with up-close footage of his scuffle with local security officials as he tried to interview a mother who lost a child in the earthquake.

  See also “Quake count: How China’s death toll of schoolchildren adds up” from the Christian Science Monitor.

  » Read more
  • May 7, 2009 3:20 PM

• Christopher Walker and Sarah Cook: China’s Commercialization of Censorship

  

  In the far Eastern Economic Review, an op-ed argues that the commercialization of China’s media sector is working against forces promoting press freedom, and not increasing freedom as anticipated:

  The irony is that the dominant Western narrative on China has it that market-oriented development would inevitably lead to liberalization, including, presumably, for the news media. This narrative’s assumptions look increasingly flawed, however. Instead, the Chinese authorities are working out a recipe for CCP media values—“watch what you can watch, and don’t watch what you cannot watch” as a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson recently explained—to trump genuine market values of open competition, transparency, and rule of law.

  Even more impressive is that the “market-based censorship” model has been achieved in the context of a rapidly changing media environment; the CCP is successfully adapting controls from old media to new, including the internet.

  » Read more
  • May 4, 2009 12:29 PM

• China Bans Pro-Student Newspaper

  

  This year marks the 20th anniversary of the nationwide, student-led democracy movement in China, and the subsequent military crackdown in Beijing. To mark the occasion, CDT is posting a series of original news articles from that year, beginning with the death of Hu Yaobang on April 15 and continuing through the tumultuous spring. The full series can be read here.

  From the April 25, 1989 New York Times:

  The latest issue of the banned weekly newspaper, The World Economic Herald, had already been printed and contained some of the boldest criticisms of the Communist Party ever published in a major Chinese newspaper. But the party today prohibited the distribution of the newspaper, according to Chinese familiar with the order.

  Qin Benli, the editor in chief of the Shanghai-based newspaper, which has a circulation of 300,000, was not in the office this afternoon. The deputy editor in chief, Zhu Xinqun, confirmed in a telephone interview that the newspaper was not distributed today as it normally is on Mondays. Mr. Zhu declined to say why it did not appear.

  Apparently a One-Time Ban

  Several people familiar with the banning said that a Politburo member, Jiang Zemin, who is also party leader in Shanghai, gave the order that The Herald could not be distributed. It was not clear if the order originated with him or someone higher.

  If you have access to additional sources of original reporting, video, accounts or photos from the spring of 1989, please send them to us at cdt@chinadigitaltimes.net and we’ll consider including them in this series. Many thanks.

  » Read more
  • April 25, 2009 12:01 AM

• Hu Yong Interview: The Digital Age, Orwell’s “Newspeak” and Chinese Media

  

  Danwei interviews Hu Yong (胡泳), Internet pioneer and associate professor at Peking University’s School of Journalism and Communication:

  Danwei: In terms of the development of Chinese culture, do you think that the Internet is a good tool? Do you think that the Internet will contribute to the erosion of traditional Chinese culture?

  HY: Aside from the technology, what does the Internet mean for China? The Internet is a new technology, and a new productive force, but we should also see its deeper and more profound meanings. The thing pushing for the Internet’s fast and vigorous development is its basic structure. Traditional computer systems are hierarchical; this kind of pyramidal structure gives dictatorial power to the system operator. In comparison, the Internet is open to the public and democratic: it does not have an owner or controller. This kind of decentralization is diffusing in society: traditional centralization of power will become stale and uninteresting.

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  • April 16, 2009 3:20 PM

• Media Scholar Urges End to Ban on Cross-regional Reporting

  

  China Media Project summarizes and discusses a talk given by CMP fellow Zhang Jiang (展江) in which he calls for an end to the ban on “cross-regional reporting,” or reporting outside a journalist’s home province, which was one way for local media to avoid censorship by their local propaganda bosses:

  Zhan Jiang’s open call for an end to restrictions on cross-regional reporting was, in my view, both the boldest and the most clear-headed statement in his wide-ranging talk. Aside, that is, from his always keen knowledge of the history and nature of Chinese watchdog journalism.

  On a number of points — and I say this with an abundance of respect for his scholarship and expertise — Zhan’s optimism seemed to get the better of his judgement.

  He makes a point, for example, about violence against journalists, saying that while reporters are often killed in places like Colombia or Mexico, “not one person has suffered bodily harm while carrying out investigations” in China. He cites the example of Wang Keqin, who, even with a hefty price on his head after his muckraking reports in Guizhou, was never harmed. But this, of course, is the very same Wang Keqin who was beaten on a recent reporting stint to Shandong.

  » Read more
  • April 9, 2009 10:24 AM

• Shenzhen Reiterates Media Control as it Pushes for Change

  

  China Media Project takes a look at comments by Shenzhen party secretary Liu Yupu to analyze the complicated dynamics of control and change in the Chinese media:

  China’s odd ecology of intermittently vibrant but always constrained speech is a difficult environment to understand. But it has to be understood through the dynamics of CONTROL and CHANGE.

  We have to begin by divesting ourselves of the notion that CHANGE necessarily means a loosening of controls, or that CONTROL necessarily eclipses change. We need to get rid of the simplistic metaphor we see constantly in foreign news coverage of China’s media — the one about expansion and contraction, of gains made and then reversed by the proverbial “media crackdown.” (There can, of course, actually be crackdowns and reversals — but they happen more frequently, in my view, in Western newspapers than they do in reality).

  [...] Getting down to business, the most recent example we have at the local level in China of the dynamics of CONTROL and CHANGE at work in CCP media policy came late last week from the city of Shenzhen.

  [...] The language of CONTROL is followed directly in Liu’s remarks by the language of CHANGE, and the focus is on commercial viability as a means of achieving both economic and political vitality (so this is at once about CHANGE and CONTROL). The idea, in other words, is that media can serve a propaganda role while at the same time making their “media products” palatable enough that they sustain themselves commercially and even work as an engine of economic growth.

  For more on the “control” side of the dynamic, see an AP story from today: “Rights groups worried by Chinese media crackdown.”

  » Read more
  • March 19, 2009 11:00 AM

• China to Create Blacklist of Local Journalists

  

  This dire-sounding report is from AP:

  According to a report in the China Press and Publishing Journal, the agency that exercises control over the state-owned Chinese media plans to “establish a database of media professionals with a bad record.”

  It said reporters who violate the rules or laws will have their press cards taken away. “Their names will be entered into the list and they will be restricted from news reporting or editing work,” Li Dongdong, deputy director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, was quoted as saying.

  China’s state-run media are tightly controlled and regularly censored in reporting the news. China relaxed some restrictions on foreign media during the Olympic Games last summer, but has since backtracked. Sensitive or negative issues are often ignored while Chinese journalists have been imprisoned for aggressive reporting on corruption in the private sector or the government.

  The national database is among a series of regulations being proposed to boost government supervision of news coverage, Li said. Among them are tightened reviews for press credentials as well as standardized qualifications for newspaper and magazine editors.

  Meanwhile. Xinhua reports that a new classification of press cards will forbid government officials from refusing interviews with selected journalists:

  A new entry in government-issued press cards, to be added later this month, might help many Chinese reporters persuade tight-lipped officials to talk.

  The entry will say: “The governments at all levels should facilitate the reporting of journalists who hold this card and provide necessary assistance.”

  “Without a proper reason, government officials must not refuse to be interviewed,” said Zhu Weifeng, a senior official with the General Administration of Press and Publication.

  Many considered this a positive signal that the authorities welcomed supervision from the media.

  » Read more
  • February 13, 2009 1:17 PM

• Journalist Jiang Weiping (姜维平) Receives Political Asylum in Canada

  

  Jiang Weiping is a Chinese journalist who spent five years in prison after writing a series of articles exposing corruption among high-level officials in Liaoning Province. Bo Xilai, then governor of Liaoning, and former Shenyang Vice Mayor Ma Xiangdong, were among those implicated in Jiang’s reporting for Hong Kong’s Qianshao Magazine (前哨杂志). Ma was later executed on corruption charges, while Bo Xilai was promoted to Minister of Commerce and became a member of the Politburo. Jiang was arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison, but was released early on medical parole. The Globe and Mail reports on his recent arrival in Canada, where his wife and daughter have been staying since soon after his arrest:

  It was only two weeks ago that Mr. Jiang’s patchwork path to freedom opened up. He was granted a Chinese passport. Soon after, a rare Canadian order was signed offering Mr. Jiang asylum, a diplomatic lifeline so long as he could reach the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

  And so it was that, first by boat and then by land, Mr. Jiang came from Dalain to the Chinese capital, a 10-hour trip. He travelled with only a small amount of luggage so as not to arouse suspicion among Chinese officials watching over him.

  He arrived yesterday afternoon, local time at the Canadian embassy. Canadian diplomats escorted him to the airport, waiting until he was on his way to Canada, where he can live for two years and apply for permanent residency.

  [...] Mr. Jiang was convicted after exposing corruption at the local and provincial levels in China’s industrial northeast. One of his stories revealed that the vice-mayor of Shenyang had gambled away $3-million in public funds. Another reported that the mayor of Daqing had used state money to buy apartments for his 29 mistresses.

  Mr. Jiang, who has a serious stomach ailment, was released from prison in January, 2006.

  You can read more about Jiang here, including examples of his journalism, and a poem he wrote for his daughter from prison.

  » Read more
  • February 5, 2009 1:41 PM

• Video: Naked China

  

  It has been five months since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China considered the Games as a symbol of the rising of a great nation. Over five nights leading to the opening ceremony, News and multimedia website Current.com came up with a series of documentaries with five parts: Busting Out; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Out of Control; Fighting for Freedom; Let the Party Begin. These video series, anchored by Laura Ling, a Current journalist, summarize Current’s former news videos to explore China’s economic growth, how China prepared for the Games, social ills in China’s society - sex workers, freedom of religion and the press, and the transition of China’s culture, via Current.com:

  Naked China: Busting Out
  

  Naked China: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
  

  Naked China: Out of Control
  

  Naked China: Fighting for Freedom
  

  Naked China: Let the Party Begin
  

  » Read more
  • January 28, 2009 3:09 PM

• In China, Media Make Small Strides

  

  From the Washington Post:

  This fall, a scholarly magazine that focuses on Communist Party history pushed the envelope again.

  Editors, emboldened a few years ago after writing about a rarely mentioned former top official the party had purged, published a cover story about a former party chief banned from mention in state-controlled media because of his support for students during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

  Propaganda officials waited two months before visiting the magazine’s director, Du Daozheng, an 85-year-old party loyalist. At his office, he said, they delivered a subtle message. “Mr. Du, you have been working so hard. And you are old now, right?” the men reportedly told Du, director of Yanhuang Chunqiu, last month. “The implication was that I should resign now,” he said in an interview.

  Read more about Yanhuang Chunqiu and Du Daozheng via CDT’s Biganzi. All of CDT’s coverage of Yanhuang Chunqiu can be found here. See also a translation of an article from Yanhuang Chunqiu, about the origins of the Red Guards, via Zhong-Mei Guanxi.

  On a related topic, ESWN translates an article from Southern Weekend about the arrests of journalists this year:

  Our investigation showed that the many cases of journalists being arrested all involved other cases behind them, and the informants were arrested as well. The reporter for magazine was charged with “suspected libel,” but all the other cases had to do with “suspicion of taking a bribe.” Each of those cases is puzzling and mysterious, which attracted extra public attention.

  Let us revisit these cases of journalists being arrested, and contemplate carefully the roles of official authority, the rule of law and the professional code for journalism.

  » Read more
  • December 28, 2008 6:15 AM

• Detentions Raise Old Questions about Protecting Journalists

  

  The China Media Project writes about domestic media reactions to the recent arrests of two journalists in China:

  Just one week after the arrest in Beijing of Li Min, a CCTV journalist accused of taking bribes while covering a story in Shanxi, Chinese media reported last week that Guan Jian, another Beijing journalist, had been ”taken away” by the police in early December while on a reporting stint to the same province.

  It is still not clear precisely what circumstances led to the arrest of Guan, a journalist from Network News (网络报). Accounts in Chinese media say the journalist went to Shanxi province to investigate a local real estate company.

  [...] After initial coverage by The Beijing News, scores of Chinese newspapers followed up on the story and many editorial pages questioned the tactics used by Hebei police to arrest Guan Jian.

  » Read more
  • December 23, 2008 11:13 PM

• Frank Ching: Are We Witnessing A Slightly Freer Press In China?

  

  From Globe and Mail:

  Strange things are happening in the Chinese media.

  Articles that one would expect to be censored have appeared in the establishment press, exposing the possibly illegal behaviour of Communist Party officials.

  For instance, the Beijing News, a state-owned newspaper, recently ran a story accusing officials in Xintai township in Shandong province of incarcerating in a psychiatric institution people with grievances against the local authorities who wanted to petition the central government in Beijing.

  It is a time-honoured practice for Chinese with grievances to petition higher levels of authority if they cannot obtain satisfaction in their locality. The capital, with organizations such as the State Bureau of Letters and Calls, is the ultimate destination of aggrieved people across the country.

  » Read more
  • December 16, 2008 7:41 PM

• Chinese Reporter Chasing Corruption Claims Disappears

  

  From Reuters:

  A Chinese newspaper reporter investigating a suspicious real estate deal who has not been seen since five men pushed him into a car two weeks ago has been accused of bribery, in the second such case this month.

  Guan Jian, reporter for the small Network News (Wangluo Bao) paper, was seized by police over bribery allegations, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Shanxi Provincial Public Security Department.

  The case appears to be the second in two weeks involving journalists who colleagues said were targeted for probing graft in a part of north China rich in both coal and corruption claims.

  See also this comment on the case from the Time China blog.

  » Read more
  • December 15, 2008 7:28 PM

• Foreign Websites Blocked Again

  

  Qiu Chen reports in AsiaWeek (亚洲周刊), via backchina.com, translated by CDT’s Lucy Lin:

  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.

  » Read more
  • December 15, 2008 12:34 AM

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