China's Pre-Olympics Media Clampdown: Extorting favorable coverage for credentials to cover

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Business Week

While the Beijing Olympics were expected to usher in a period of greater media freedom in China, as the final countdown for the Games nears, the vise on the media is getting tighter. That's the conclusion of a report released on July 7 by Human Rights Watch, entitled "China's Forbidden Zones, Shutting the Media out of Tibet and Other 'Sensitive' Stories."

Speaking at the release of the report at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong, Sophie Richardson, the group's advocacy director for Asia, said the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee is "trying to extort favorable coverage in exchange for accreditation to cover the Games."

She also faulted the International Olympic Committee and Olympic sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Lenovo, and Samsung, for failing to press Beijing more on human rights. "They all have very nice-sounding lofty corporate social responsibility pledges, but when you challenge them on their involvement in the Games, their aims narrow dramatically," she says. "Their promises only apply to people who work for those companies. They have made no attempt to rock boats."

China won its bid to host the Olympics in part thanks to its promises to improve media freedom, Richardson says, and Beijing did lift temporarily restrictions on the foreign media for the period from January 2007 to October 2008. This liberalization allowed members of the foreign media to travel freely anywhere in the country except Tibet without prior approval, and to interview whoever they wanted. But the pendulum swung back the other way after protests in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa erupted in mid-March this year, and a government-orchestrated campaign to "demonize" the foreign media ensued, Richardson says....The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also declined to investigate anonymous death threats leveled at foreign journalists in the nationalistic backlash that followed....

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2008/gb2008077_562471.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business

[tularetom]

1. Hey it worked for Faux "News"

They're good in China at copying Western ideas.

[Better Believe It]

2. Business Week?

Oh ya.

That's where I go for unbiased non-corporate sponsored news.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. It was linked on MediaBistro.com, and it's the only place I've seen this story...

as I've been looking through numerous online news sources today. I certainly saw no slant in the story, except it was, of course, not complimentary of China's government.

[Better Believe It]

6. OK

Just tired of the western hypocrisy on China.

[Redstone]

3. Why am I not surprised?

Redstone

[Flagg]

5. The Chinese will be the new "ennemy" after we "defeat" the "muslims"

[ohio2007]

7. strange bedfellows these Chinese make when it comes to the games

China shuts mosques

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have replaced top police and security officials in the Muslim dominated Xinjiang province, which is the hotbed of separatism and political violence. They have also closed down 41 "illegal" places of worship.

These places of worship were used as training ground for conducting a "holy war",

snip

Xinjiang borders Kazakisthan and several other countries including Pakistan and Russia. "From now, all police officers must act urgently, get involved once more in Olympic security, to make sure large and small incidents alike do not happen," Chen was quoted by official media as saying.




http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/China_shuts_down_41_illegal_mosques/articleshow/3220173.cms

Looks like jihad will not be a medal event in China