Tibet Crisis: Media Bias vs Media Control Archives

May 11, 2008

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2004/08/the-words-you-never-see-in-chinese-cyberspace/

A List of Censored Words in Chinese Cyberspace
It is an open secret that all Chinese Internet hosting services, including wireless and instant messenger services, filter user communication through key word blocking mechanisms. But overly vague and broad Chinese internet laws and the internet police force never made the forbidden words explicit — Not until some Chinese hackers located a document within the installation package of QQ instant messaging software. The file contains over one thousand words, most of them in Chinese, which will be blocked by the service.

Owned by Tencent, QQ is China’s most popular Instant Messenger service. On a regular basis, tens of millions of users use their service. On one day, March 13 , there were more than six million users online using QQ at the same time. Because of its high traffic volume, it is technically much harder to build in the key word filtering mechanism on the server’s end. Instead, Tencent sneaked in a filtering program file in their installation package at the client end. When a client installs the QQ2003 software on their own computer desktop, a program file, called COMToolKit.dll, is automatically included. This file contains all the forbidden keywords, which will be automatically blocked when the client runs QQ. The full list is below.

Recently, some Chinese hackers located this file and released it on the Internet. The censored key words list is commonly used not just for QQ, but also for all websites, BBS and text messaging services. One Internet user did a rough breakdown of the list: About 15% of the words are sex related, the rest are all related to politics. About 20% of the words are Falungong related, including “师父”(master) and “弟子” (disciple); about 15% are names of current officials and their relatives; about 10% are words used in the liberal political discourse such as “democracy”, “freedom”, and “dictatorship”; and about 5% are related to certain nationalistic issues, such as“保钓”(defend Diaoyu Island),“中俄边界” (Sino-Russian Border) ,“卖国”(selling out the country) etc. About 15% of the forbidden words are related to anti-corruption, such as ，“走私”（smuggling） ,“公款”（public funds） etc. Other censored words include names of dissidents, writers, and intellectuals, and names of certain foreign publications. Please find the entire list attached here:

From Program Files\Tencent\QQGame\COMToolKit.dll:

Posted by google at 03:24 PM | Comments (0)

April 09, 2008

Something you won't see from western media

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April 08, 2008

An Open Letter to the Official-In-Charge of CNN

To Whom It May Concern:

March 31, 2008

Dear Madam/Sir,

Credibility is the only key for every member of news media to accomplish wide public recognition. It is an intellectual asset wooed by every member of media. While the establishment and confirmation of such credibility is an accumulating and difficult process, the destruction of such is as easy as blowing a candle.

CNN was inaugurated in 1980. While it struck the media community with its coverage of the attempted assassination of President Reagon, CNN was not really seen as part of the main stream by the American public then. CNN failed to lift itself off from financial difficulty within the five years since its inception. Its audience share was among the lowest. The most outstanding feature of CNN was live coverage at the scene. However, in the Gulf War between 1990 and 1991, CNN allowed audience around the world to watch "Desert Shield", a war raged by the Alliance troops with United States as the leader to fight Iraq. In August 1991, a coup d'etat broke out in Kremlin, at the time even the U.S. CIA received no advanced warning, but CNN was able to make the first presentation of the event to the world expeditiously. Since that time, CNN has achieved an outstanding reputation and confirmed its status as the only global TV news agency. It has then established an invaluable and hard-to-achieve level of credibility.

It is undeniable that journalists at CNN in general observe the most basic rules of news reporting, seeking for the truth and all the facts. However, regrettably, these rules seem to be applicable only to news stories about the Western countries. For news about China, the Chinese Communist Party or overseas ethnic Chinese, a double standard based on entrenched chauvinism would arise. Discrimination, prejudice and an anti-Chinese sentiment would then replace all ethic standards and rules of news reporting. CNN would adopt all means of distortion, stating inversely right into wrong , mixing lies into truth, taking quotes out of context, defaming and making wrongful accusation, and even fabricating facts without basis to cover news in China and life of the overseas ethnic Chinese, and to tarnish and demonize China, people of China and the overseas Chinese.

On March 14, the "Tibetan Independents" provoked certain criminal elements to start a riot in the capital city Lhasa of the Tibetan Self-Autonomous Region of China. As it had done before, CNN did not shake off its attitude of being unfair and non-objective in covering news of China. In order to prove its intention of portraying "Tibetans are being persecuted", CNN first broadcast non-stop news stories about "Tibetans assaulting Chinese" and "Tibetans burning down shops owned by the Chinese". CNN unreasonably tried to separate the Tibetan compatriots from the Great China Family of 56 ethnic groups. It then edited the original photos on Internet and presented the most convincing parts to confuse the facts and to fool the audience. It even became a spokesman of Dalai Lama and repeatedly emphasize that rioters in Tibet were in "peaceful demonstrations", and that China had launched a "military crack-down" in Tibet, a "control measure by force" and "a hundred Tibetans had been killed". These are all but fabricated news stories to mislead the American public and they deprived the rights of people around the world, including the American public, to find out the facts and the truth.

These made-up news stories were based on distortion of facts, casting inversely right into wrong, mixing lies with truth, taking quotes out of context, defaming and making wrongful accusation and fabricating facts without basis. Not only did they become the worst failure of news reporting by CNN and became the biggest joke 0f 2008 among members of media, but they undermined the credibility long established by CNN.

Credibility is the soul of news media. The ugly conduct of CNN in its tarnishing and demonizing of China cannot and will not escape from scrutiny in this age of mass media. For its coverage of Lhasa riot on March 14, the American public has timely created a humorous and sarcastic comment about CNN: "Don't be like CNN", which has been widely adopted all over the country. It seems like the credibility established with tremendous endeavor by CNN over the years has suddenly collapsed in the eyes of the American public.

On behalf of Citizens of Chinese descent in United States, members of the United Chinese Associations of Eastern America strongly condemns CNN for its adoption of a double standard and the violation of ethic for news coverage. The Association would like to caution members of the CNN news team that the key of good news coverage lies not only in its timeliness of presentation, but also in its fairness, objectivity, truthfulness and credibility. In case that the journalists mix their individual ideology, personal taste of favor and disfavor, their wishful prejudice or subjective judgment with their news coverage, they would violate the most basic ethic in news reporting, i.e. being fair, objective, truthful and credible, and they would lose their credibility in the media community and among the public. The kind of news coverage, as lacking credibility as CNN has presented, not only would mislead the public and harm sentiment of the people, but it would become a negative factor in obstructing and damaging the relationship between China and United States, and in hurting the friendship between peoples of the two nations.

Sincerely yours,

Executive Chairman of

United Chinese Associations of Eastern America

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April 06, 2008

Chinese leadership struggles to control freedom of expression

Paul Mooney
YaleGlobal, 22 July 2004

In Beijing, the thirst for information is strong, but so is the government's desire to control it. (Photo: Nayan Chanda)

BEIJING: When Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao began to take over the reins of the Chinese Communist Party and China's government in November 2002, liberal intellectuals expressed modest hopes that the new leadership would loosen the tight gag on freedom of expression. Against the backdrop of China’s increasingly closer integration with the world, the government did indeed relax some controls in the first few months, but it has since become clear that the Communist Party is not about to open the door to its own demise. Still, with critics increasingly bolder and more determined, there can be no return to the past.

In early 2003, Hu rapped state television network on the knuckles for pandering to government officials, Politburo propaganda czar Li Changchun called for more hard-hitting reporting and officials were told to be more responsive to the needs of the media. Journalists took up their offer to be more open in their reporting, even though it meant nudging the invisible line that every journalist knows is not to be crossed.

But the promise of a Beijing spring was quickly dashed in March 2003 when the outspoken daily paper 21st Century Herald published a letter by Li Rui, former secretary to Mao Zedong, harshly criticizing past and present Party leaders – specifically Chairman Mao, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin – for being autocratic. The newspaper was soon shut down, and more than a year later remains closed.

Since then, officials have stepped up attacks on Internet dissidents, scholars and journalists, leading some observers to say the freedom of speech today is more threatened than in the grim days shortly after the 1989 Tiananmen democracy crackdown. While there has been a major relaxation of media taboos—from reporting on disasters to corruption and social issues—the unwritten rule remains that any news that potentially threatens the Party’s authority is strictly off-limits.

Earlier this year, two former editors and the former general manager at the hard-hitting Southern Metropolis Daily in Guangdong were arrested on charges of embezzlement and bribery. Chinese sources believe the real reason for their arrest was the newspaper’s active coverage of SARS and its reporting of the case of Sun Zhigang, a graphic designer who was beaten to death while in police custody in Guangzhou last year.

The most telling example of the clampdown concerns a best-selling book published earlier this year titled “An Investigation of the Chinese Peasantry." The title is eerily similar to Mao’s seminal work, "The Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement of Hunan", which set the stage for the Party-led revolution. This shocking look at the plight of farmers was an instant hit, and the husband-wife authors were soon turning up on TV shows and in the pages of newspapers and magazines around the country.

But despite the new leadership’s stated concern for the rights of farmers, the book’s assertion that things are not so good down on the farm was too much for the Party to accept. The Propaganda Department banned the book a few months ago, and co-authors Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao now face a lawsuit by a local official whose son is a judge in the local court. Attempts to move the hearing to a neutral court have failed, and the farmers quoted in the book are too afraid to testify in court, leaving the authors despondent.

Despite being banned, the book has gone on to sell millions of pirated copies on the streets. Nonetheless, the case is a sad reminder of the consequences of expressing one’s opinions.

In February, Jiang Yanyong, the 72-year-old retired Army surgeon who a year earlier had gone to the foreign media with proof of SARS, was back in the spotlight. Bolstered by his SARS fame, Jiang wrote an open letter to the leadership in which he called on the government to admit responsibility for the 1989 crackdown during the Tiananmen protests that left hundreds, and possibly more than 1,000, dead. In his letter, the retired surgeon recalled treating wounded and dying people in his hospital on the morning of June 4. Since releasing his letter, however, Jiang's fame has not been enough to protect him. He and his wife were both detained on June 1 on their way to the U.S. Consulate to apply for a visa to visit their daughter in the U.S. His wife was released two weeks later, but Jiang was held for 49 days while undergoing what the Washington Post reported were “brain-washing sessions.” Whether Jiang recanted under pressure is still unclear, but the government has said that his case is still not closed.

The Party is clearly facing a dilemma. If Jiang had not been dealt with, say intellectuals, it would have sent a signal that people can speak up. At the same time, if 49 days in jail wasn’t enough to break the elderly doctor’s will and he continues to publicly criticize the government,, the Party will face a very embarrassing situation. Although Jiang’s detention and release has not been reported anywhere in the Chinese media, more and more Chinese are learning the news every day, and respect for him is growing.

Nor is Jiang an isolated case.

In May, Bao Tong, a prominent liberal and former high-ranking official, lashed out at the Party in the run-up to the June 4 anniversary this year. In his statement, Bao took the Party to task for failing to advance reforms since 1989. “On the contrary, some things have even gone backwards,” he wrote. He particularly cited Party interference in the media and publishing sectors. Bao, long a thorn in the government’s side, spent seven years in prison for opposing the 1989 crackdown, and is under round-the-clock surveillance. Foreign journalists who try to telephone him say the calls are repeatedly disconnected.

Earlier this year, Jiao Guobiao, a professor at the prestigious Beijing University, and a former journalist, wrote a scathing attack on the Propaganda Department, which oversees the media, saying the Party organ uses Nazi tactics and is the “stumbling block” in the development of Chinese society.

“Today, you can’t mention ‘Jiang Yanyong,’ tomorrow you can’t reflect on SARS, the day after tomorrow there will be some new taboo…,” he wrote. While Jiao’s article will obviously never appear in the media, it has circulated widely on the Internet to the delight of many Chinese.

Government measures to silence its critics don’t appear to be having the intended effect, as journalists and scholars continue to speak out and the government finds it increasingly difficult to be the sole guardian of the truth. Aggressive young journalists continue to dig into a growing array of sensitive news, from the recent fake baby milk powder scandal that left dozens of babies dead around the country to the growing army of petitioners who arrive each day in the capital to air their grievances at central government officials over runaway local corruption.

While Chinese intellectuals and journalists acknowledge that they are able to speak out about an increasing number of topics, they warn that this should not be mistaken as a move toward true freedom of expression. Sensitive political issues will continue to remain off-limits for the foreseeable future, they say. Neither Hu Jintao nor Wen Jiabao will sanction any reform that will undermine the Party’s—and their own--authority. As one Western diplomat says, “The Party is not in the business of putting itself out of business.”

Paul Mooney, a freelance journalist, has been reporting on China for 15 years.

Rights:
© 2004 Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=4265

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March 29, 2008

Because of Tibet, China Blocks YouTube

March 17, 2008, 10:55 am

By Mike Nizza

China’s efforts to tame protests in Tibet and possibly others in its own provinces has spread to the Web, following a familiar pattern that has once again raised a question posed by Seth Mydans of The New York Times during the crackdown in Myanmar:
[Can] the much-vaunted role of the Internet in undermining repression can stand up to a determined and ruthless government?
In both cases and others, an uprising began largely out of sight before spilling onto the Web in videos and images. Officials in Myanmar and China bother claimed that they were showing restraint while unconfirmed reports hinted at grim tolls.
In Myanmar’s case, a fleeing general’s claim of thousands of dead was never proven. The junta’s toll in October was 10, though no one’s been allowed to confirm that either.
Beijing said today that 16 have died in the protests so far, but a figure cited by exiles is five times that, according to the Times.
For those outside “Great Firewall of China” (who were unaffected by the blockade, unlike Pakistan’s recent gaffe that affected Web users worldwide), the Committee to Protect Bloggers has gathered many first-person videos from Tibet in a playlist on YouTube.

Aside from videos, a wealth of first-hand reports may be available inside China, though tracking them down may be difficult without Web sites like Agam’s Gecko and Global Voices, two critical hubs of information during the Myanmar protests that are likely on Beijing’s radar.
John Kennedy, the Chinese language editor at Voices, has posted frequent updates based on translated blog posts from inside Tibet and also a guide for others to evade China’s internet controls. His latest post is mostly urgent — the headline is “Fire on the streets of Lhasa, Tibet” — but one account that he cites hits an innocent note:
Lhasa is rioting…school was closed…spoiled my birthday…fighting in the city is brutal!

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/17/because-of-tibet-china-blocks-youtube/

Posted by google at 03:08 AM | Comments (0)

Chinese Take Aim At News Media On Tibet

2008/03/26/10:15 by Geoffrey A. Fowler from Wall Street Journal

The Chinese government bans CNN in most homes. The talk of China in recent days? The news coverage on CNN.

Since March 21, Beijing Internet entrepreneur Rao Jin has been operating the Web site anti-cnn.com to document what he sees as inaccurate foreign coverage of the recent unrest in Tibet. Earlier this month, Tibetan protests against Chinese rule turned violent in Lhasa, and have spread elsewhere in China.

'Most news coverage on the Tibetan uprising is biased or exaggerated,' says Mr. Rao, pointing the finger at the Time Warner Inc. cable news channel, as well as the Washington Post Co.'s flagship newspaper.

In China, many citizens see no conflict in making searing critiques of inaccuracies in the Western media, even as the Chinese government actively censors the news out of Tibet. The backlash highlights the depth of animosity widely felt in China toward Western attitudes about what many Chinese feel is a domestic issue.

On Tuesday, China continued to grapple with protests among its Tibetan population. State-controlled news media said one policeman was killed and several others were injured after a group attacked them Monday in Garze, an ethnically Tibetan area of Sichuan province. Police fired warning shots to disperse the crowd, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported. The India-based Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy said its sources claimed that protesters clashed with armed police, who subsequently fired into the crowd, killing one monk and leaving another in critical condition, the Associated Press reported.

Police in Garze didn't respond to a request for comment. The Chinese government on Tuesday said 22 people have died so far in the unrest in Lhasa, while the exiled Tibetan government puts the number closer to 140 in a broader region.

As it is taught in Chinese schools, Tibet has been a part of the Chinese nation for hundreds of years, and the Dalai Lama's appointment has always been subject to Beijing's approval. This coincides with the modern idea of China as a country that harmoniously incorporates 56 distinct ethnic groups -- the majority Han (around 92% of the population) along with 55 minorities, including Tibetans. At the same time, experts say, China's experience of being partly colonized by foreign powers in the 19th and 20th centuries makes many people deeply suspicious of foreign involvement in Chinese affairs.

Not all Chinese have defended the government's position. On Saturday, more than two dozen Chinese intellectuals signed an open petition laying out a 12-point plan for dealing with the Tibetan situation. Their points included ending the government-run media's 'one-sided propaganda campaign,' allowing foreign media to report in Tibet and negotiating directly with the Dalai Lama.

For nearly two weeks, information about Tibet has been extremely hard to come by. Government-controlled media have kept their coverage sparse, while foreign journalists have been ejected from Tibet.

Broadcasts of foreign channels such as CNN, which are ordinarily allowed only in select hotels and special compounds, now face blackouts even there when Tibet news comes on. Many Web sites offering news, video or comment about the situation have been blocked, including Google Inc.'s YouTube, which was inaccessible inside China for nearly a week after the uprising began. Access to YouTube was restored Sunday, but portions of the site remained blocked, including most news clips about Tibet by Western media outlets. A search for 'CNN' on YouTube in China generated an error message.

Amid the confusion, the Internet is serving as a propaganda battleground in shaping Chinese opinions.

In particular, some Chinese are using the Web to attack the accuracy of Western reporting about the Tibet situation. Their argument: foreign news media frequently write about censorship in the Chinese press, so they should be forced to see their own bias.

Mr. Rao's anti-cnn.com site has been visited by more than 100,000 people so far, he says. The 23-year-old entrepreneur, who runs an Internet-services company, says he came up with the idea for the site after chatting with friends outside China who felt that much of the Tibet coverage was biased or exaggerated.

So far, Mr. Rao says his site has collected more than a dozen inaccuracies or exaggerations in the Western press, he says. One example: He says CNN's Web site ran a photo from news agency Agence France-Presse that was cropped to show a police van, but not people nearby attacking the vehicle with stones. On some occasions, he says, a CNN anchor has also referred to Tibet as a 'country.'

A CNN spokeswoman says the image in question had to be cropped to fit the standard story size of the site. 'It was impossible to include both the drama of the crashed vehicle on the left and the protesters on the right in the same crop,' she says, noting that the image's caption said that Tibetans were throwing stones.

'CNN not only stands by its decision to publish the image in question, but also refutes all allegations by bloggers that CNN distorts its coverage of the events in Tibet to portray either side in a more favorable light,' she says. CNN calls the 'country' reference a 'spoken error' which wasn't repeated by the on-air graphic.

Mr. Rao says his site isn't targeting CNN in particular, but picked it for the name because it 'stands for the voice of the mainstream Western media.' He hopes that 'running the Web site will help supervise the media at home and abroad and help uphold journalism ethics.'

Many of the complaints made by Mr. Rao and other bloggers are about photos with inaccurate captions, depicting violent police crackdowns on Tibetan protestors in Nepal and India but labeling them as taking place in Tibet. The errors, say bloggers, create the misimpression that the violence has been one way, from Chinese police toward Tibetans.

The Washington Post Web site has amended a caption on a photo to correct the location and published an editor's note saying, 'The caption for an earlier version of this slideshow was incorrectly associated with a photo from Nepal.'

German TV station n-tv Nachrichtenfernsehen GmbH admitted in a statement that it had heard from some Web sites and newspapers that it had used pictures in the wrong context, and has corrected them. 'We sincerely regret this mistake while, at the same time, assert that n-tv reports independently,' said company spokesman Christoph Hammerschmidt.

The domestic Chinese press has picked up on the efforts of Mr. Rao and other bloggers. Sunday's Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper in Guangzhou ran a full-page story documenting the 'unbelievable variety of errors.'

Mr. Rao says he is aware that the Chinese government itself works to censor the information available about Tibet, which makes it difficult for journalists to do their jobs. Yet he supports the restrictions because, 'if [foreign reporters] are biased before getting into Tibet, they are very likely to work out one-sided stories about the incident,' he says.

So where does he turn for the accurate information?

'I read books and search for information online,' he says. 'Netizens here are able to make their own judgments on things. They do not rely only on the government or Western media for information. They apply their tech prowess in searching for information and verifying things they've been told.'

YouTube now hosts a video, watched more than 1.7 million times as of Tuesday night China time, titled 'Tibet was, is and always will be a part of China.' There are responses on YouTube from the other side, too -- including one titled 'Tibet is not, should not and will never be a part of China' -- but they are far outnumbered so far.

If anything, Mr. Rao says, the Chinese government would do itself a service by reducing the censorship it applies to foreign sites such as YouTube, 'to allow a larger stage for Chinese Netizens to fight back.'

http://chinese.wsj.com/gb/20080326/chw103417.asp?source=article

Posted by google at 02:21 AM | Comments (0)

March 28, 2008

Lhasa riot reports show media bias in West

Lhasa riot reports show media bias in West
By Ye Jun (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-22 09:04

Chinese netizens, including students studying overseas, have been angered by biased and sometimes dishonest reports about the recent riots in Tibet by some Western media.

Pictures from some media websites, including CNN and BBC, with untrue reports about the riots have been posted on chatrooms, drawing criticism.

"I used to think the Western media were fair. But how could they turn a blind eye to the killing and arson by rioters?" asked a posting at pic.qikoo.com.

The pictures illustrate how news can be manipulated.

The BBC News website carries a picture with the caption saying "There is a heavy military presence in Lhasa", while the photo clearly shows an ambulance bearing the red cross symbol.

The American Fox News website published a photo with the caption "Chinese troops parade handcuffed Tibetan prisoners in trucks", while the photo shows Indian police dragging a man away.

CNN.com used a cropped photo of Chinese military trucks, cutting off the half of the picture showing a crowd of rioters throwing rocks at the trucks.

More notably, the websites of Germany's Bild newspaper, N-TV and RTL TV, and the Washington Post all used pictures of baton-wielding Nepalese police in clashes with Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu, claiming that the officers were Chinese police.

"To tarnish China's image, the West is doing whatever they can, no mater how mean and vicious," said one netizen on www.huanqiu.com.

"Is this what they call Western democracy and freedom of speech?" asked another netizen.

Huai Bao, a student studying filmmaking in Vancouver, Canada, said: "I have read some news and online discussions made by those who have never been to Tibet, who have zero knowledge about China and the history of Tibet. These people have no rights to comment on Tibet."

Bao, from Beijing, became a believer in Tibetan Buddhism after meeting his master, a high-profile lama, in the Chinese capital.

He said that some Tibetan monks set fire to shops, schools and hospitals, and attacked Han and Tibetan people, including women and children.

"My master told me that the monks involved in the riots were not real monks, as violence and crimes are absolutely against the teachings of Buddha," he wrote in an e-mail to China Daily.

Netizens also mentioned a blog (kadfly.blogspot.com) run by a group of Western tourists traveling in Tibet during the riot, where photos and video clips of Tibet are posted.

Although their photos were used by the New York Times and the BBC, the following words did not make it into the Western press.

One blogger wrote: "I want to make one thing clear because all of the major news outlets are ignoring a very important fact the protests yesterday were NOT peaceful."

He wrote that all of the eyewitnesses agreed that "the protesters went from attacking Chinese police to attacking innocent people very, very quickly. They appeared to target Muslim and Han Chinese individuals and businesses first but many Tibetans were also caught in the crossfire."

A video clip was posted on the blog, in which a Han motorcyclist, an obvious passerby, was stoned by a crowd of mob.

Bao said there is a unanimous feeling of anger among his Chinese friends in Vancouver.

"Any news about China has to be negative so that they will believe it - from 'poisonous toys to poisonous dumplings'. Some foreign media have a particular interest in bashing China over human rights and pollution. They turn a blind eye to all progressive changes."

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-03/22/content_6557738.htm

Posted by google at 10:45 PM | Comments (0)

Tibet Crisis

presented by China News Club, University of Michigan