Foreign Policy looks at the broader problems relating to journalism and the media in China, in light of Google’s decision to stop censoring its Chinese search engine:
Put bluntly: The climate for China’s journalists is worsening, and it doesn’t have anything to do with Google, or with the Chinese Communist Party’s pretense to absolute ideological control of information. The problem is not that the party is scrubbing the Internet to remove stories it deems negative. The problem is the corrupt network between business and government, which places unwarranted pressure on journalists and editors. “It’s no longer about abstract propaganda discipline,” Bandurski says. “These days it’s about specific money and power interests.”
Case in point: In 2008, a newspaper called the China Business Post published a story that exposed malfeasance at the regional branch of one of China’s biggest state banks. The bankers protested — to powerful effect. One of their allies turned out to be a well-placed party chief who was tied to the businessmen through personal relationships. The next thing the journalists knew, the government had suspended the paper.
“The network of agencies devoted to media control in China, including the propaganda department, are now, more than ever before, mediators and players in a vast web of power and profit,” Bandurski wrote in an analysis of the incident published in March 2009 in the Far Eastern Economic Review. “They no longer dish out just propaganda dictates; they dish out personal and professional favors too.”
