I read an interesting piece written by Amando Doronila of the Philippine Daily Inquirer that talks a bit about China blogs and their effect on mainstream media like newspapers. Some excerpts:
Editors of People’s Daily in Beijing [said] they do not fear the extinction of newspapers due to competition from new media (i.e. online news) distributed free to Internet users. They do not share the concerns of their Western newspaper counterparts, who have pointed out that online news is parasitical, as it is derived from newspaper reports.
The editors said they were not excited about blogs or bloggers as sources of information. They agreed with the comment that bloggers are unreliable and undisciplined as sources of news. “Stories should be based on facts,” the editors said.
The editors know their readers want to read informed interpretation of news, not just snippets of information provided by the bloggers. Blogging is anathema to the Chinese.
Well, essentially that is what I am doing right now–posting snippets of information–but I wonder why China blogs continue to proliferate in the Internet?
Bloggers answer to no one. If they unleash their wrath or opinionated curses, they do not think about the case where companies pull out their adverts or if a boycott will lead the publisher to shut down the paper. And since we are talking about controlled Communist China, what better place there is to practice journalistic freedom?
Anyway, just to make the Chinese connection, someone said “unsalaried bloggers represent low-cost Chinese laborers, professional journalists the well-paid-with-benefits American workers.” Both can produce the same results. So okay, bloggers can actually dispatch information that is worthy of journalistic sense.
Having read various China blogs and had my share of Chinese mainstream news, I have a theory: When a specific blog is targeted by the Chinese Net Nanny, more likely than not, the blog offers something which is a deviation from the actual, “normal” reporting. Thus it is newsworthy.
We’re in China, so I guess that is why blogging is anathema.
What are your views on the Chinese media and the Internet?
If the Chinese media was able to base their stories on facts instead of what they are told to report, blogging would probably be less of an anathema.
Course, to some extent, that’s kind of true in almost every country.
This is a new interesting blog I found on Asians in the North American media, especially Canadians. Considering there are so many Asians in the Canadian community, it’s amazing how little portrayal there is about them and their lives as immigrants in the film/tv/media industry. Very interesting ideas…
Gotta agree with Tom. If the people do not trust the mainstream media, they would instead believe in rumors spread on the Web. This is true in Malaysia too.
In any case, most bloggers just want to share their personal stories. They have no intention to compete with the mainstream media.
People’s Daily thinks bloggers are parasites? Don’t they also copy news (a lot) from others? What does that make them? Parasites with govt backing. = =
OK, I shouldn’t have said the last one.