The following post by Sina Weibo “News is Already Dead” (新闻已死) was deleted sometime before 8:30 a.m. today, December 10, 2012. The post shares a news page from Taiwan’s Want Daily months ago about a survey from Freedom House in which Taiwan was ranked second in Asia for its degree of press freedom. The article mentions in the subhead that mainland China was 187th in the ranking, coming in near the bottom. The post wryly remarks that at least China is still ahead of countries like North Korea and Myanmar. “News is Already Dead” currently has just under 62,000 followers, according to numbers from Sina Weibo. [More on deleted posts at the WeiboScope Search, by the Journalism and Media Studies Centre]
Number 187, that’s still not bad. At least we’re still ahead of those “golden nations” that neighbor us. This is neither a gift nor an utter shame.
The original Chinese-language post follows:
187名，还好，最起码高于邻邦“金国”。既不知耻，亦不后勇。
NOTE: All posts to The Anti-Social List are listed as “permission denied” in the Sina Weibo API, which means they were deleted by Weibo managers, not by users themselves.
