August 29 — In a humiliating gaffe for Chinese officials who have lately shifted their campaign against fakes (including fake news) into high gear, the official Yangzhou Evening News was awarded one of the Chinese journalism’s highest national awards for a newspaper page that never existed. [More from ESWN]. August 30 — China’s emergency response […]
August 7 — In a bold and rare show of domestic concern over China’s human rights record and its international image as the 2008 Olympic Games near, 39 Chinese lawyers, scholars and journalists signed an open letter to China’s top leaders today appealing for more action on human rights. Capitalizing on China’s official theme for […]
This summer, with its damaging revelations of fake news, has been one of discontent for the Chinese media. First came the “cardboard bun affair.” Next came the apocryphal news story of the “worst stepmother in history,” exposed as a “well-intentioned” hoax about domestic abuse aimed at drumming up financial support for a young girl suffering […]
July 17 — A top official in China’s Information Office, the government arm chiefly responsible for controlling China’s internet, called the cover-up of negative news by local officials “naive”. Appearing on a CCTV talk show on July 13, Wang Guoqing said some government offices were “relatively naive” in “covering up” negative news and preventing media […]
The steamed bun may now have become one of the most befitting symbols we have for the riddle of free speech and public trust in China. Almost two days after Beijing TV issued a public apology, for a “fake” July 8 report alleging food vendors in Beijing were filling steamed buns with waste cardboard, the […]
Chinese media, once again, have become the news. After a spate of recent news coverage highlighting poor food safety standards in China, an undercover story from Beijing TV showing steamed bun vendors in the country’s capital using cardboard as a meat substitute came as little surprise — that story, which over the last several days […]
CMP reported yesterday that a face-off was shaping up in the case of the beating death of China Trade News reporter Lan Chengzhang (兰成长) — between local party officials in Datong, Shanxi Province (where the reporter was killed), who insist Lan was a “fake” reporter out to extort money from local coalmines, and representatives from […]
Just two days after a Xinhua bulletin exposing acts of “news extortion” by four Chinese reporters, Chun Cheng Wanbao (春城晚报), a commercial spin-off of Yunnan Daily, ran an editorial attacking the practice. What sets this piece apart from other expressions of outrage in the Chinese media is its thinly-veiled reference to public interest and its […]
According to a report by Beijing Youth Daily, the first session of this year’s traveling “Three-Points Study and Education Campaign” (三项学习教育活动), an indoctrination drive designed to “educate” journalists in their obligations as well-behaved members of China’s state-controlled news industry, went off swimmingly in Beijing on May 13. As it only could, of course. The training […]
As the campaign for the “civilized” kicked into full gear in China, an April 24 editorial in Market News, published by the official People’s Daily, talked about the need for self-censorship for a more “civilized” Internet — a goal to be accomplished by pacts of good behavior between Internet companies in China, including Yahoo!. Clearly, […]
