Video: Newsroom confrontation in China
A local TV news outlet shows a confrontation between BaWang International representatives and journalists at the National Business Daily’s Shanghai bureau over the paper’s coverage. The video was posted to the Chinese video-sharing website 56.com. National Business Daily responded assertively to the confrontation, eliciting an apology from BaWang. Read more about Chinese journalists defending their colleagues…
In China, more calls for media freedom
Today, members of China’s Communist Party Central Committee met in Beijing to open a three-day discussion on the country’s next five-year development plan. And while they’re unlikely to openly debate a recent letter by 23 senior Party members, which called for sweeping reforms of China’s media censorship policies, it will certainly be in the air.
Communist Party elders urge end to China’s censorship
Twenty-three senior Communist Party members have published a letter calling for sweeping reforms of China’s media censorship policies. “Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favor of a system of legal responsibility,” the letter said, according to an English translation by Hong Kong University’s China Media Project. Widely distributed by e-mail and posted…
China seeks to block news of Liu’s Nobel
New York, October 8, 2010–The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on the Chinese government to end its pointless attempts to block the news by blacking out domestic and foreign media coverage of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s announcement awarding jailed human rights activist Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. According to foreign news agencies’ reports from…
Internet blotter
The International Telecommunications Union starts its plenipotentiary meeting this week. Some worry that some nations will use their position at the ITU to attempt to grab more control over how the Internet works. RSF covers the Burmese DDOS attacks. I’ve heard some really fascinating detective work on the real origins of these attacks – hope…
Global Voices Advocacy: Great Firewall of China Upgrade?
Oiwan Lam reports widespread disruption for users of Freegate, the popular circumvention software in China: According to the RFA report, users from several provinces across the country have encountered similar problem and they believe that it is due to the upgrade of Great Fire Wall. Apart from the Freegate, when running UltraSurf and FreeU the…
China Media Project – Microblogs are crucial in China
Hu Yong’s writes on the rise of microblogs (like Twitter, which is blocked) on the Chinese Internet. Recently, when a newspaper reporter exposed related-party transactions by a listed company, local police authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. Tens of thousands of microblog posts were sent out about this incident. Users expressed their views and…
China sets prison terms for 3 Uighur Web managers
New York, August 2, 2010—Three Uighur-language website managers were sentenced Friday to prison terms of three to 10 years after being found guilty under broad charges of “endangering state security.” The men had been jailed after ethnic rioting in July 2009 in Urumqi, capital of the far-western, predominantly Muslim, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
China sentences Uighur journalist to 15 years
New York, July 26, 2010—The 15-year jail sentence imposed by a Chinese court on Uighur journalist and website manager Gheyrat Niyaz is unjustly harsh and should be overturned immediately, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. The fact that Niyaz was convicted under sweeping “endangering state security” charges is an indicator of how far the government will go…