Censorship
The Australian reports that Xinhua moves to tighten censorship:
XINHUA, Beijing’s official news agency, has issued rules demanding international counterparts censor news and information distributed in China and barring them from dealing directly with local clients.
…
Sunday’s ban on the distribution of any agency content that “harms China’s national security or honour” or “disturbs the Chinese economy or social order” matches other recent moves by Beijing to tighten media censorship.
Let’s be absolutely clear that this story has nothing, nada, zip to do with the fact that MSNBC just axed Altercation, its blog by Eric Alterman.
Given that the article, NBC channels its funds online, indicates that Mr. Alterman is not being fired [his characterization] for economic reasons, and the on-line expansion would certainly be negatively impacted by the loss of Mr. Alterman’s readership, it must be assumed that the NBC action is a decision based on politics, while the Chinese action is actually an attempt by Xinhua to increase its competitiveness in the Chinese media marketplace.
Rather stunning: the Communist Chinese are making decisions based on the marketplace, while an American corporation is making decisions based on ideology. Both were designed to be overlooked in the media frenzy over 9-11.
Update: the new Altercation link is http://mediamatters.org/Altercation
