THe google bit is interesting. Sounds similar to the crackdown on porn accessed through search engines that some Chinese ministry offshoot tried a few months back…there was a thread on that here on FM…and the head of that oversight body is the sister of a politburo member.

@R4K: Not sure what you’re driving at with Thomas Kuhn. I’m not a logical positivist, if that’s what your trying to say. Science might be logical and empirical, but I believe human beings are driven by emotion, then use logic to justify their emotional decisions.

I can buy into your first two media requirements, but disagree with you on #3. Two different opposing opinions? For me, that’s exactly what’s wrong with today’s media. I’ll give you an example: The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer decides to talk about abortion. One guest wants legalized abortion up until the head is out but the body is still in the womb. The other guest wants all abortions to be illegal, whether involving incest, rape, or the mother dying. Similarly, a debate about gun control has one guest saying everyone should have to carry guns and can have bazookas and tanks on their front lawn, since tanks don’t kill people, people kill people while the other guest wants to make water pistols illegal. Sure I’m exaggerating, but not by much.

It’s the job of the reporter NOT to present both sides but to do the research necessary to find out who is lying and who is telling the truth, or where most people actually stand on an issue. That’s real reporting. Bringing in a guest to tell why the Holocaust never happened is not reporting and not balanced discussion. It’s the reason I don’t watch the NewsHour anymore.

(1) Journalists who have little knowledge or experience with some subject matters should not be allowed to write stories of these subjects or to run fact checks for their colleagues on the subjects.

I was quite amazed and sick of some of the ridiculous articles written about technologies and laws from people who had no clue what they were talking about.

(2) Experts should be thoroughly tested for their knowledge before quoted. I don’t want some quotes from a Creationism high priest disguised as Biology.

(3) all controversies should be reported as opinions, not as facts. And balance of at least 2 different opposing opinions should be included as such.

*but as far as Media who are not willing to do so, I consider them less than truthful and professional.

One begin knowledge by recognizing conflict and anomalies all around us.

To break through any paradigms, one must recognize their false boundaries/limitations by continually accept new anomalies that challenge them.

This is the basis of work of Thomas Kuhn.

Only when one has gather enough data of anomalies, one can formulate new theories beyond the current.

*Thus, I do not see the discussion as limited, when one is willing to see the anomalies. They are everywhere on all sides.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=19688

“[6/12] the Wall Street Journal reported that China wanted to require PC makers to
bundle Green Dam with each unit sold.”

There, this is the only reporting that’s consistent with the 5/19 MIIB announcement I’m able to find. Once again there’s no government censorship if end users are not required to install or run Green Dam, and the filters are configurable, does not call mothership.

For example, remember that lady reporter in Germany got suspended for sticking up for China on a story?

And our media’s collective silence on the clarification of this Green Dam distribution issue, and errorneous decry of “censorware” continuing, to me is evident enough.

The nature of Chinese characters would not allow that, so I think there’s a case to be made for both sides. If a typical Chinese computer keyboard could create the character, why regulate it beyond that? That seemed to be the issue. But I don’t see this story as being anything but a typical human interest story. Maybe this is an example of that cross cultural divide? The way it was written made perfect sense to me and I had no problem understanding what the issue was from either side.

I’d also consider the Xinjiang story to be another human interest story. Are human interest stories unique to western media?

@ R4K: If no media sources are reliable, that really limits what we can discuss, since just about all the information we have about the outside world is filtered by the media, either ours or theirs. Right now, everything we’re hearing about the Iran election, as an example, has been filtered by one media source or another. It would really limit discussion.

I always ignore comments sections when they concern Chinese articles. The comments from both pro and anti are some of the most knee-jerk, extremist out there. That’s why I come to FM, where the talk is usually more reasonable.

I don’t know if sloppiness qualifies as “out to get”, but if there is enough ignorance, it is willful and intentional.

I don’t go for conspiracies, but I have seen enough willful ignorance on the subject of China in the media to be very suspicious of their motives, especially when there is lobbies and money involved.

*as for which media I trust. I don’t.

I read them all, I don’t trust any of them. I read every article base upon what I know, and if I learn something new, I double check it with other sources.

Afterall, I can’t expect journalists to have integrity on facts, if I don’t want to bother to do my own research to some basic fact checks.

I’m not sure ‘cultural sensibility’ is the right word. Nor do I feel insulted — if anything, they insulted their own intelligence. Take the name story for example, is it that difficult for a westerner to relate? Nobody ever had any problem to get his name spelt right in official documents, if it happens to contain an umlaut, an apostrophe, a caret, or any other diacritics? What if you want your driver’s license to contain an archaic form of some Roman letters? What if you want it in Greek, or Slavic alphabet? What if you want it in Chinese? These I think are rather easy parallels you can draw to help you understand an issue, yet there is no such effort.

If you want to frame it in terms of cultural sensibility, I don’t think it’s the insensibility of the western reporter or audience toward another culture. In stead, in these cases unfortunately, they choose to turn off their own cultural sensibilities and try to be hyper sensitive to what’s happening in another culture. If they are misinterpretations as you call them, you can almost attach a ‘willful’ qualifier.

Both articles have a comments section, and almost as expected most comments don’t display sensibilities in any way. They look more like knee-jerk reactions to the mention of bad commie China.

This also goes the other way. Westerners might read something written or said by a Chinese source and completely misinterpret it based on their own culture. The advent of the internet and ease of reading foreign news sources has contributed not to universal understanding, but more to universal mistrust, because each culture misinterprets what they read based on their own cultural mores and folkways. I’m not sure there’s a cure for this one.