Issue around the world: Censorship

As recently as yesterday,i heard over the BBC that China has decided not to renew the license of Melissa Chan which has in this case forced the closure of Al-Jazeera's english bureau in China.

Censorship
It is not something new as the most recent case for this was back in 1998. From this i felt that China is trying to show that even in this day and age, the Chinese politburo is still wielding its power and strength in trying to scare the foreign media sources to adhere with its ruling.  It is believed the Beijing allows journalist to report freely in China and that the only restriction placed would be on Tibet however the actual truth is not as what it is believed as when sensitive issues are raised, it is possible to see journalists being hauled in and given warning. They would then threaten to revoke their visas and try to control what they report in the country itself. This itself is censorship and that it has always worked in the traditional media.

However a new form of media has been challenging this sort of censorship and that i will discuss it in the next paragraph.


The power of new media 


To me personally, i feel that even though journalist do play a significant role in getting news across traditional media, they are also fast becoming crucial in the new media as well. With the advent of Twitter and Facebook and even with Weibo in China, news that were once suppressed are now becoming available to the those using this media and thus censorship is not as effective as it used to be. The other factors are that more and more youths and young adults are now found on these site more often and that with news corporation taking advantage of this new media such as the BBC, it is now giving voices to people who were once not able to get their point across using the traditional media.

Chen Guangcheng use of Youtube


As also seen recently was human rights lawyer Chen Guangcheng with his plead to Wen Jiabao through Youtube showing that it is now possible for news to filter past the traditional media and with it the video from Chen Guangcheng going viral almost led to a crisis between the Americans and their Chinese counterpart who were due to meet for a summit that was to cover something else but Chen Guangcheng.

Final Thoughts


As we can see from both example is that censorship is not a one size fit all approach to stopping news from spreading as it only works in the traditional media but if the country decides to take an extreme step to stop all internet connections like what the North Koreans do then they would become a "hermit" country. However if they don't then news other than from the tradition media would be here a the long haul.