[HN Gopher] China proposes prohibiting private investment in new...
___________________________________________________________________
China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service
sector
Author : tkgally
Score : 138 points
Date : 2021-10-09 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloombergquint.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloombergquint.com)
| Jensson wrote:
| I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why
| articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as
| they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over
| articles written by Google?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| At least theoretically, if customers actually valued accuracy,
| they would punish news organizations that were not accurate. A
| for profit newspaper would need to respond to the changing
| market.
|
| A not for profit newspaper could easily have a backer with
| other motivations, where they might be willing to sacrifice
| accuracy to push a particular agenda.
|
| I am not sure that the problem is the news. I do not think
| people really care if they get accurate news.
| pydry wrote:
| By that token snake oil in any shape or form shouldn't exist.
| Theoretically.
|
| In any case, the eyeballs are the product. The advertisers
| are increasingly the true customers of media outlets. They
| don't even theoretically care about accuracy.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Precisely. In that case people want hope/easy solutions
| rather than good solutions.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Do people not care about accuracy? Or have they just given
| up?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They would rather have news that aligns with their values.
| gruez wrote:
| >Do people not care about accuracy?
|
| Evidently not. When was the last time a mainstream news
| organization got heat _from its own viewer base_ because of
| inaccurate reporting? I mean, it 's fun to dunk on fox news
| because you think they're obviously spewing lies or
| whatever, but that doesn't really matter unless their
| viewership actually cares. Meanwhile outrage drives clicks,
| so journalists are strongly incentivized to stretch the
| truth.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The issue is that modern news (and the economic model
| that backs it) is a mix of entertainment, education, and
| investigation.
|
| _Even_ assuming all leads were pursued equally, _and_
| all stories were published, entertainment is still highly
| partisan.
|
| Which, presumably, is why we saw partisanship jump when
| the entertainment component increased in revenue
| importance (90s talk radio, then 2000s competitive 24/7
| news).
|
| Fox News was objectively brilliant in that they saw this
| coming, which is why they went ahead and devoted a huge
| chunk of their airtime to entertainment-weighted
| programming.
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| I think people care about accuracy. The problem being that
| the way our brains work, we perceive as accurate whatever
| matches our bias.
| osigurdson wrote:
| I'm not sure we should demand non-profit or government funded
| media, but I do like the idea of media outlets being legally
| required to disclose any conflicts of interest or funding
| sources which may bias content one way or the other.
| simonh wrote:
| Google writes news articles?
|
| The issue is freedom of expression. If individuals are allowed
| to speak, write and disseminate information and opinion freely
| and own businesses, why can't they charge for it? Well, that's
| a news organisation. It's not that you necessarily trust any
| one individual publisher, it's that a range of views are freely
| represented in the press generally.
|
| The Chinese constitution used to guarantee free speech, but the
| massive disconnect between what the constitution said and what
| was actually allowed was so gargantuan it became a bit of an
| embarrassment in the post-Tiananmen era. Since then the
| constitution has been revised extensively to be less blatantly
| contrary to reality.
|
| Totally incidental aside, but one of the inciting incidents for
| constitutional revision was a court case brought by a person
| fired from their job for being short, where the actual job had
| no real requirement for them being any particular height. They
| won the case based on the constitution's barring
| discrimination, but the fact that a court had granted a right
| to someone based on the constitution was so novel and unheard
| of that it caused massive conniptions in the CCP.
| tremon wrote:
| _Well, that 's a news organisation_
|
| No, that's a publisher. "News" describes the product, not the
| method of operation. Has the war on words been so successful
| that Americans univerally consider e.g. Cosmo "news" now?
| simonh wrote:
| That seems unnecessarily pedantic and argumentative, to be
| honest. News is information, right? Anyway I'm a Brit.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Google writes news articles?
|
| Google writes PR pieces. I don't see why you should trust
| news articles more than PR pieces, except as links to other
| sources that you can check yourself like scientific articles
| or government agencies with data.
|
| > The issue is freedom of expression. If individuals are
| allowed to speak, write and disseminate information and
| opinion freely and own businesses, why can't they charge for
| it?
|
| You can make legally protected news organizations, and that
| anyone who doesn't follow those rules isn't allowed to call
| themselves a news site with journalists. Instead they'd be
| forced to call themselves opinion writers or bloggers. That
| way you still have the freedom of expression but lets the
| public clearly see who follows the basic rules of independent
| reporting.
| simonh wrote:
| So now you need to define independent, and that definition
| is made by lawmakers, who are politicians. So news now
| comes under direct political control. Lovely.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Having worked for non-profit news, I can tell you that they are
| in effect not that different from for-profit news. The majority
| of their revenue comes from wealthy donors, often in the form
| of "major gifts". Granted, this is usually done because it
| becomes a tax break but that doesn't mean that certain folks
| with enough money don't have unsaid influence. The frequent
| pledge drives are somewhat of a charade in that they create the
| perception that they will run out of money if they don't get
| donations from average joes _right now_. Depending on the
| outlet, this may or may not be the case. In big cities, non-
| profit media would be unlikely to go away even if most of their
| audience stopped donating.
|
| In terms of journalistic ethics, non-profit is somewhat better
| but by design isn't necessarily free of the same crockery that
| occurs in for-profit news. Non-profits are more likely to get
| people who take journalistic ethic seriously, but non-profit
| orgs are also seen as career leap-pads to the big name for-
| profit outlets, thus you end up with a lot of the same people
| and similar practices that end up at places like WaPo.
|
| I don't know what the answer is to news, but I'm pessimistic
| that present models of non-profit news are the solution some
| believe them to be.
|
| > I wonder why [...] articles written by for-profit
| organizations are as trusted as they are.
|
| That's like asking "why do people believe propaganda?" The
| entire business model is built on creating the _perception_
| that they are authoritative when they may be nothing but
| lackeys playing dress-up. Sadly, the average person receives a
| generally poor education and is never taught about human
| psychology and how programmable the human brain is, and many of
| the messages they 've received about the world came from
| parents whose views were shaped by a world that didn't have the
| internet in its current form. You could place the truth in
| front of them and it's a mixed bag as to whether they take that
| information and form an original opinion. But if you dress that
| information in a suit and tie, perhaps with the right letter
| and color next to their name, they become conditioned to accept
| that information from a place of _subordinance_.
|
| EDIT: I want to clarify that I don't actually like _shitting_
| on public media. There was a lot that I learned during my time
| in it, there _are_ some fantastic journalists in that arena,
| and overall I _want_ to be believe in the concept. I 've been
| highly critical of just about every single organization I've
| ever been affiliated with, so my intent isn't to single them
| out.
| roenxi wrote:
| Most Americans don't seem to trust the press. Faith in "Mass
| Media" has plummeted to levels appropriate to their reliability
| on important issues [0].
|
| And the media is a strange place. Something like Joe Rogan's
| podcast is realistically more mainstream and probably more
| trusted than most news programs. There will be many examples
| like that.
|
| [0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-
| med...
| gruez wrote:
| >Something like Joe Rogan's podcast is realistically more
| mainstream and probably more trusted than most news programs
|
| How can you "trust" a podcast that just interviews everyone
| and takes them at face value? Do people seriously go "yeah I
| heard it on joe rogan so I think it's probably true"?
| math-dev wrote:
| Unfortunately yes
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Yes a bunch of people do unfortunately. Same with things
| like tucker carlson, alex jones, and a whole bunch of
| crazies creating an alternate reality that has lead to
| Trump, Jan 6 and more. There is some of this on the left
| but IMHO the 'reality' in that sphere is more having a
| worldview or political positions based mostly on facts.
| fellodip wrote:
| I like to think of there being different domains of trust.
| Trust to present accurate information to their best
| knowledge, trust to thoroughly vet information, trust to
| not construe facts to construct a false reality (ie a
| narrative), trust to tell it like it is, trust to not
| present a biased self interested story that omits important
| things purposefully, trust to be an expert on the subject
| matter, and so on.
|
| Obviously any thinking individual will know Joe Rogan is
| worse at some of these aspects than mainstream media but
| they also recognize that mainstream media will willfully
| consistently violate other domains where Joe Rogan won't.
|
| I trust Joe Rogan will tell me some stupid stuff about
| conspiracies and extra dimensionality trips, but I also
| trust that he won't tell me this stuff just to sell me on
| sponsors or his party's agenda, unlike the mainstream news.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yeah as much as I like Joe Rogan's show (or at least I did
| before it moved to Spotify), I never thought of it as
| something I "trusted", or even something that would be
| comparable to a news program. Maybe I trusted that it was
| _less fake_ and _not as staged_ as most news, but it 's
| comparing apples to oranges. Also, I dispute the idea that
| JRE is mainstream. It might be the most mainstream
| _podcast_ , but almost everyone I know either hates the
| show or believes that Joe Rogan is a bad person, so I'm
| skeptical.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Shouldn't we rather forbid the centralization of news? I
| wouldn't know how to do it, but AFP belongs 60% to the French
| government and is as bad an example as CNN or BBC.
|
| Shouldn't news be parcelled like AT&T and centralization
| systematically unweeded, for it is far more dangerous than
| centralization in energy or internet providers. Then, when
| there are thousands of small information providers, we can see
| bottom-up what actually interests people, rather than beating
| up an idea from the top-down until people think it's
| interesting.
| chmod600 wrote:
| What does non-profit news look like? A few rich people starting
| non-profit and making news might not be very trustworthy. I
| guess you mean a wide group of donors. But non-profits have a
| lot of trouble raising money without controversy. Imagine
| trying to solicit donations when every other story alienates
| half the donors.
|
| And it doesn't really answer a lot of the hard questions. Who
| is going to actually write the articles, what's their political
| angle, and what are their career objectives? And how do you
| handle delicate topics with evolving information in a neutral
| way?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What does non-profit news look like?_
|
| Subscriber owned, _i.e._ subscribing involves buying a voting
| share in the enterprise. Endowed. Donor-driven is just one
| among many non-profit models.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| A better evolution would probably be similar to Spotify
| royalties.
|
| Create one "donations to non-profit news" bucket, that people
| could freely contribute to (with tax advantages, like the
| election fund).
|
| Then apportion that money out to _all_ non-profit news
| organizations, according to some (readership) + (journalistic
| awards by their peers) weighting.
|
| It removes the direct connection between donor and output,
| which is what we seem to want in news.
| xattt wrote:
| An example of non-profit news in the US is PBS Newshour and
| in Canada, The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO. Both have
| broadcast pieces as well as accompanying online articles.
| chmod600 wrote:
| PBS is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
| which is tax money. So it's more like NPR or the BBC.
|
| Also, PBS has a variety of content and I don't think I know
| anyone who watches their news. Scarcely any of their
| content, but they have a few good things. I don't think
| they are taken very seriously as a news organization --
| much less than NPR, for instance.
| xattt wrote:
| Some of it may be tax money, but some of it is donations
| made by individuals and organizations. The credits of PBS
| Newshour front-load the show with names of the
| contributors.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they've repeatedly mentioned that they're
| also funded by viewers like me ;-)
|
| Yes, they get government funding and have a public
| mission. But they also aren't entirely funded by tax
| dollars.
|
| I do think they have a weird bias that they are very
| oblivious to, but I don't think it's exactly a pro-
| government bias. It seems more like a don't-be-
| controversial bias where the goalpost for that keeps
| shifting.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| There's NPR/PBS and it's fantastic.
| Frost1x wrote:
| They need stable secure funding that's unaffected by what
| the publish (not the quality per see) and autonomoy. With
| that, you tend to get good news.
| [deleted]
| chmod600 wrote:
| I don't think that's what the parent post had in mind.
| Those are more like state-sponsored news. Technically non-
| profit, but usually considered a different category.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Many "non-profit" agencies are actually funded by the wealthy
| or special interest groups. "Non-profit" is a tax status thing,
| not necessarily "in the public interest" label.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| I agree, but Google is more in the news aggregation business,
| right?
|
| I pay monthly donations to Democracy Now, PBS, and Matt Taibbi.
| For my tastes, I very much prefer these sources rather than
| MSNBC or Fox News, which I dislike (one reason is that they
| never seem to walk back major stories that we eventually find
| out that they initially got wrong - that seems either
| unprofessional or corrupt, or maybe both).
| Ransid wrote:
| Because deep down they know there is no point to consuming
| "real news" anyway. Intelligence agencies do not care what the
| peons think, and subverting the political processes of other
| countries is what they have been doing worldwide for
| generations, so accomplishing that at home is not a challenge
| for them. At this point most Americans dislike their fellow
| American to the extent that the very idea of "organizing" is
| almost comical. So because there is no real solution, they'd
| rather just watch some flashy and corny high-production
| bullshit which tells them who should be the safe target of
| their rage (for a while now it's been poor whites). They'd
| rather masturbate to some video of some guy on his deathbed
| dying and saying he regrets being an anti-vaxxer. The
| alternative is trying to get people to hate eachother less,
| which is antithetical to the entire "hope one day you hit the
| lotto and become one of the elites" mentality that sustains
| most people.
| Gordayn wrote:
| Because deep down they know there is no point to consuming
| "real news" anyway. Intelligence agencies do not care what the
| peons think, and subverting the political processes of other
| countries is what they have been doing worldwide for
| generations, so accomplishing that at home is not a challenge
| for them. At this point most Americans dislike their fellow
| American to the extent that the very idea of "organizing" is
| almost comical. So because there is no real solution, they'd
| rather just watch some flashy and corny high-production
| bullshit which tells them who should be the safe target of
| their rage (for a while now it's been poor whites). They'd
| rather masturbate to some video of some guy on his deathbed
| dying and saying he regrets being an anti-vaxxer. The
| alternative is trying to get people to hate eachother less,
| which is antithetical to the entire "hope one day you hit the
| lotto and become one of the elites" mentality that sustains
| most people.
| david38 wrote:
| Because when people hear non-profit, they think NPR, which is
| wildly biased.
|
| A true facts only news outlet is likely best, but provides
| little entertainment value.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| https://www.allsides.com/news-source/pbs-newshour
|
| Seems centrist according to AllSides, but in my experience is
| has been Center-Left to Left.
| redisman wrote:
| Wikipedia has a major recent events section which is the
| closest thing to this I've seen
| solmag wrote:
| Americans be like "our media is owned by these two large
| companies, we are freedom brave".
| systemvoltage wrote:
| US Gov doesn't prevent you from starting your own.
| [deleted]
| ResearchCode wrote:
| The US Gov is effectively Google Facebook and they will shut
| you down or shadowban you under some pretense. As well as the
| politically protected duopoly Visa, Mastercard refusing
| payment processing. If Cloudflare even allows your site to
| stay up. You survive that, you also have to dodge secret
| police assassins and top politicians calling for your murder
| as with Assange and Wikileaks.
|
| But yes aside from that you are totally free to start your
| own media.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Damn, you're making me think about all this consolidation.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > so having stronger public investments in media could be helpful
| to stop this pervasive divisiveness.
|
| The government can't invest in all media organizations equally.
| This will just be a new source of polarization in itself.
| Gustomaximus wrote:
| On the flip side China purchased most Chinese language media in
| Australia some time back.
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/chinese-language-newspapers-...
| refurb wrote:
| Seems like China sees Australia as the front line in their
| battle with the West.
|
| The recent nuclear submarine deal makes a lot more sense with
| that world view.
| notfromhere wrote:
| ANZAC are the only two European settled Western countries in
| Asia, so not surprising. Especially since Australia is so
| closely integrated into the Anglosphere.
| gpt5 wrote:
| ANZAC stands for Army corps, not for the countries. And the
| countries have hemselves are not in Asia.
| gpt5 wrote:
| ANZAC stands for Army corps, not for the countries. And the
| countries have themselves are not in Asia.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| > ANZAC are the only two European settled Western countries
| in Asia
|
| It wasn't for lack of trying.
| johncena33 wrote:
| As an immigrant in Canada, I always thought Canada is the
| entry door in the West for China. Canada's biggest city
| Toronto not only has a huge amount of Chinese population, a
| vast majority of them are new wealthy immigrants. Urban white
| Canadians also tend to be pro-China under woke ideology
| umbrella.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| Makes sense as AFAIK they are reliant on China with their
| economy
| ChemSpider wrote:
| I thought so, too. But it seems it is more the other way
| around: Australia was doing fine (can sell its stuff
| elsewhere), but China needs the imports:
|
| https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-
| economy/article/3151549/c...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| It's complicated. By proportion of trade, China is more
| important to Australia than Australia is to China.
|
| But that only speaks to the total values, not
| substitutability or importance.
|
| Given that most of what China imports from Australia are
| raw materials, and China is still a primarily
| manufacturing and construction economy (in dollar terms),
| it seems like a shortsighted move.
|
| Especially since Australia generally has good
| relationships with the West (especially the UK and US)
| due to shared culture.
|
| The proper time to try to bully Australia into line would
| have been 20 years from now, once China's economy has
| fully developed and Belt and Road has had time to play
| out.
|
| But I imagine the Chinese were looking at Australia
| through the optics of (1) what the US was doing & (2) how
| a Chinese reaction to Australia's stubbornness would be
| read by other, smaller SE Asian countries.
| tweedledee wrote:
| I have a feeling Australia will also get nukes reasonably
| soon. First nuke subs, then US bases with US nukes, then nuke
| subs with nukes. The Chinese pushed the Australians too far,
| they underestimated their obstinance. Australian attitudes
| are changing rapidly and in my view it won't take long until
| a nuclear deterrence becomes the obvious and only solution.
| babelfish wrote:
| How has China 'pushed' Australia at all?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Essentially, circa 2015+, Australia began loudly pushing
| back on Chinese claims to the South China Sea & regarding
| Taiwan, and banned Huawei involvement in core telecom.
|
| China, seeking to make an example in the region,
| escalated.
|
| https://www.hudson.org/research/17228-how-china-
| overreached-...
|
| _" Since 2018, China has refused to accept cabinet-level
| meetings with Australian counterparts, and for the past
| year is refusing to even accept phone calls. Since 2020,
| Beijing has imposed punitive measures against Australian
| barley, coal, timber, beef, cotton, sugar, copper, wool,
| lobsters, wine, and liquefied natural gas. These export
| sectors bring in around $15 billion a year from China.
| State authorities have issued arbitrary travel and safety
| warnings to Chinese students hoping to study in
| Australia."_
| babelfish wrote:
| So if Australia was the instigator, how can China be
| blamed for their sanctions ("pushing" Australia)?
| speedybird wrote:
| How do you read that comment and conclude that Australia
| was the instigator? Do you really believe that China's
| claims to the South China Sea are legitimate?
| 8eye wrote:
| interesting perspective, i have not even considered that
| eunos wrote:
| meh these days the important messages are delivered by WeChat.
| coldtea wrote:
| Crude.
|
| Why force it legally, when they could just have the private news
| sector de facto mirror what the establishment says (complete with
| a faux-choice between two parties), like in the US?
| usrusr wrote:
| A communist party taking steps against private investment? What
| has the world come to /s
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| No it is taking steps against independent media.
| user_named wrote:
| This news story is off. Foreign entities have always been
| forbidden from engaging in media production and publishing in
| China. While the negative list is updated yearly, this isn't new.
| azernik wrote:
| This also removes domestic (Chinese) private capital from the
| possible investors/owners.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Bloomberg links to General Market Access (MA) Negative List for
| all players (domestic + foreign) versus Foreign Investment (FI)
| access list for just foreigners. Though it was pretty much
| forgone PRC openning domestic service industries won't include
| media considering how hard NGOs were cracked down.
|
| https://www.ndrc.gov.cn/yjzxDownload/sczrfmqd2021.pdf
| jollybean wrote:
| This is not a story of foreign capital, but private capital.
|
| Information is power, Xi wants 100% control over it. It's
| probably more important than controlling the Armed Forces in
| the long run.
|
| If you put people in a bubble only let them see what you want
| to see, it's pretty easy to control them, it doesn't matter who
| they are.
| eternalban wrote:
| Xi does not want power for himself. Xi wants power to remain
| in the hands of the party and CPC is laying the foundation of
| governance model for a robust state in the 21st century that
| also (TBD) does not inhibit economic and technological
| development. It is reasonable to argue against that goal
| (statist socialism) but imho superficial to frame this as yet
| another power grab by an individual. He is simply the tip of
| a consensus block in CPC. Historically, Xi represents the
| 'adjustment of CPC to global conditions while maintaining
| continuity of the party' post Nixon era re-engagement and re-
| evaluations.
| philliphaydon wrote:
| If Xi did not want power for himself he would not have
| removed the two-term limit to keep himself in power for
| life.
| plantain_00 wrote:
| General Secretary of the CCP(no term limit) is the top
| leader, The president of the PRC is the ceremonial head
| of state of the PRC, So the president's two-term limit
| removed in 2018 is not important, just like the Queen of
| England(ceremonial head of state) has not term limit. htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_People%27s_Re
| ...
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Because Communist countries tend to have very messy
| transfers of power, if not through continuity or
| annointment of a new leader by the old?
|
| And by messy I mean armed forces involvement and/or
| bodies in the streets.
| jollybean wrote:
| China has had a decent track record, they are well
| organized. If Xi truly believed in China, then he would
| make it a priority to facilitate a smooth transition of
| power, and to enable the leader after their ascension. I
| really don't think this is much of an excuse for him.
|
| The story is really simple - CCP wants to forbid any
| private control of information, that's it. It's not a new
| concept.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The Deng -> Zhao -> Jiang -> Hu years weren't very clean,
| and did have military involvement and civilian deaths.
| jollybean wrote:
| You're right, I should have merely indicated the leader,
| not the individual, that's fair.
|
| It's unlikely that anyone really knows what Xi wants. The
| narrative that 'he just wants what's best for China' plays
| directly into his potential megalomania, at the same time,
| I don't doubt that there is some truth to this as well.
| Nations can benefit from long-lived leaders.
|
| That said, the whole thing does not look good. Actions
| further suppressing the spread of basic information are not
| going to be good for China in the long run. And Xi probably
| is just another kind of dictator, we have a very long run
| of world history that gives us innumerable examples. One
| thing he could have done when extending his term limits,
| was signal when he would leave, and making sure that the
| 'new rules' are just and equitable with respect to future
| leaders.
| xtian wrote:
| Do you think people in China don't know how to use VPNs and
| find information on the broader Internet? They do. It seems
| like you may be the one living in a bubble.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Of course they do. Do you think the Chinese government
| can't figure out what you access via a VPN?
|
| I find it hard to be confident that the US Security
| Apparatus couldn't figure out what I access via VPN if they
| chose to.
|
| I'm not sure whether the US or the CCP would be more able
| to block all VPNs, but I have the feeling the answer is the
| latter (for legal, rather than technical reasons).
| xtian wrote:
| Maybe, but do you have any evidence that people are
| punished for using VPNs to view information that is
| officially banned on the Chinese Internet? Or is that
| just a personal fantasy
| jollybean wrote:
| A VPN will get you a few research papers, and some insight
| into the world outside, but it won't change common
| attitudes within the country, which will be shaped by a
| controlled information system.
|
| Having a 'hole' in the information firewall can be useful
| for some things, but it's still a marginal effect.
|
| Most of the population won't have any use for it - they'll
| have no reason to question what's in the mainstream.
|
| When Xi bans any negative mention of him, or any mention at
| all of taboos subjects i.e. Tiananmen, or any material
| discussion at all of sensitive issues like Taiwan, Uyghurs
| or Tibet, Hong Kong, anywhere, at any time - then he'll
| effectively convince the general population of his will on
| the subject.
|
| The population will ,by and large, believe what he wants
| them to believe, most people wouldn't consider dissent on
| the issue because there would be no point.
|
| There are some people within every population that will
| chose to 'look outside' and 'seek unpopular truths' - but
| the mainstream population will take care of suppressing
| them.
|
| Xi could do anything he wants to the Uyghurs, he could
| subsequently justify it in the press irrespective of how
| truthful that information was, and the general public would
| be fine with it. The small number of dissenters would have
| no means to disagree.
|
| When you combine information control with the fact that
| there's a lack of any right to organize or assemble, then
| you have total control. FYI - this is why 'freedom of
| assembly' is a primary right in all modern constitutions,
| it's mostly a means of organizing around information.
|
| Finally, it would be incredibly naive to not grasp the
| implications of this regulatory movement which further
| entrenches total government control of information, without
| any oversight whatsoever.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Most of the population won 't have any use for it -
| they'll have no reason to question what's in the
| mainstream._
|
| Exactly. The point of information control in closed
| society is not to avoid the exposure of particular
| events, but to suppress entire lines of thought.
|
| F.ex. How would you begin a conversation with a North
| Korean about democracy?
|
| Their very concept of the idea, inasmuch as they are
| likely aware of it at all, is alien to your concept.
|
| Which means that conversation has to start all the way
| underneath, at the underpinnings and philosophical bases
| of democracy. Which is a much more _difficult_ and
| _lengthy_ conversation.
|
| Which is the entire point, because most people won't make
| the effort. Anymore so than the average American is
| capable of and interested in learning enough to have a
| nuanced conversation on the differences between Soviet
| and Chinese communism.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| Just a comment on the following:
|
| > Taiwan, Uyghurs or Tibet, Hong Kong
|
| These are not the types of issues that most Chinese
| people are upset about, when it comes to their
| government. These are the types of issues that play well
| to audiences _outside_ of China.
|
| There's a massive disconnect here. Most controversies,
| cultural trends, fads, etc. in China receive almost no
| coverage outside of China, not because it's intrinsically
| difficult to find out about them (all you need is an
| internet connection and Chinese language skills), but
| because the foreign media tends to focus almost
| exclusively on the types of issues you listed. The vast
| majority of people outside China simply have no idea
| what's going on in the country.
|
| This isn't to excuse the lack of independent media in
| China, but just to point out that the foreign media is
| also doing the public a massive disservice on this count.
| jollybean wrote:
| Thanks - but this is mostly my point - though I don't
| agree with your conclusion.
|
| People within a 'closed system' (i.e. China) are going to
| have a view of an internal issue that the government
| wants them to have.
|
| "There's nothing big happening here, just 'ABC' because
| 'XYZ', the Westerners a bit upset about it but that's
| their colonialist view, they should mind their own
| business"
|
| So they justify their actions, don't allow debate,
| suppress the language of rhetoric, distract and use the
| 'foreigner' straw man, and make petty villains out of
| anyone challenging the authority.
|
| That 'people don't care' is the result of that control.
|
| The same thing is true in Russia. Putin has journalist
| and political opponents killed, and he's totally corrupt.
| And yet, he has an 80% approval rating.
|
| If you can control the press and the narrative, you can
| convince people that your actions 'were necessary for the
| promulgation of the state', the plebes won't be able to
| make an informed consensus as to any situation.
|
| Likewise, Russians seem to have an indifference to a lot
| of state corruption.
|
| So I don't agree that 'The West' is doing a 'big
| disservice' by talking about issues that the average
| Chinese doesn't care about, or by highlighting how
| corrupt and murderous Putin is.
|
| The whole point of the exercise is to contemplate that
| 'rights' are a material part of the equation - and,
| ironically - probably going to make them much wealthier
| in the long run anyhow. Hong Kong and Taiwan are
| considerably more wealthy on a per-capita basis, at least
| largely because they don't live under the sane ultra
| authoritarian system.
|
| The Tiananmen protests were a very powerful and visceral
| display of where the power really lies in China, and the
| true consequences of challenging that power. It's an
| important bit of history.
|
| Finally, we're all victims of this to some extent,
| western press has a number of potent institutional
| biases, and now we have the problem of completely
| fabricated news, which is another thing altogether.
| DiogenesKynikos wrote:
| The reason why most Chinese people care about completely
| different issues is not because they are uninformed. The
| average person in Chinese is much better informed _about
| China and its domestic issues_ (including Tiananmen) than
| most people outside of China. After all, they actually
| live in the country and experience it every day. Many
| people personally lived through the events of Tiananmen,
| or know people who did. But frankly, after 30 years of
| massive societal change and (for people in the developed
| world unimaginable) improvements in living conditions, it
| isn 't on the top of people's minds. There are other
| issues - issues that are rarely covered in the foreign
| press - that are much more pressing.
|
| I find that many Westerners believe that because they can
| read the New York Times or Washington Post, they know
| more about what's going on in China than people in China
| do. The problem is that those newspapers only cover a
| tiny sliver of what goes on in China, and they focus
| almost exclusively on a small set of negative stories
| (and very often, this reporting is extremely inaccurate,
| partial or exaggerated). Imagine if you didn't speak
| English and had never been to the US, and all you ever
| read about the US was how terribly prisoners are treated
| and all the wars it fights around the world. You would
| have an incredibly skewed picture of the country.
|
| What do people actually care about? Things like the
| corrupt local officials who may be colluding with
| property developers (and consequently, the ongoing anti-
| corruption campaign is very popular), or the rat race to
| get ahead in an ultra-competitive society.
|
| > Hong Kong and Taiwan are considerably more wealthy on a
| per-capita basis, at least largely because they don't
| live under the sane ultra authoritarian system.
|
| The gap between the more developed parts of the mainland
| and Taiwan is rapidly closing, and is not that large any
| more. Beijing and Shanghai are not far behind Taipei, and
| may catch up in the next few years. Hong Kong, on the
| other hand, is considerably wealthier than either Taiwan
| or mainland China.
|
| I just think that most of the Western press does a
| terrible job of covering China, and is actually
| significantly _misinforming_ its audience in this regard.
| The quality standards for China coverage are just
| incredibly low (and because the audience is mostly
| uninformed on the topic, they mostly can 't tell), and
| the geopolitical rivalry seems to color and shape the
| reporting to a huge extent.
| xtian wrote:
| > Most of the population won't have any use for it -
| they'll have no reason to question what's in the
| mainstream.
|
| > [...]
|
| > The population will ,by and large, believe what he
| wants them to believe, most people wouldn't consider
| dissent on the issue because there would be no point.
|
| > There are some people within every population that will
| chose to 'look outside' and 'seek unpopular truths' - but
| the mainstream population will take care of suppressing
| them.
|
| The more effective approach by far is to condition people
| from childhood into believing that the ability to select
| from one of a few impotent political identities, all of
| which lead to the slightest variations of policy
| conclusions within the field of pre-determined
| acceptability, represents the universal best possible
| form of governance and the purest instantiation of such
| high-minded ideals as Freedom, Liberty, and Justice.
|
| This way you can mollify a population into accepting
| almost anything as normal: endless wars, hundreds of
| thousands of preventable deaths, lifelong debt, a
| constant struggle to afford housing, education, and
| medical care, etc. You can convince them at will that any
| rival is a tyrannical regime under a capricious,
| childish, genocidal maniac, and that any evidence to the
| contrary should be dismissed with self-satisfied smugness
| as coerced or compensated state propaganda.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| If I was Xi, I would be looking at Ruppert Murdoch as evidence
| par excellence of the corrosive effect of foreign investment in
| media.
| preach wrote:
| If I'm a hardline Westerner and I feel like participating in a
| pro-Chinese Western Community, what are my options? HN isn't the
| place for this. Basically, I'd like to praise China for the last
| handful of bold moves they've made, but the usual channels (FB,
| Twitter, Reddit, HN, ...) are vehemently anti-China. I'd probably
| get shadowbanned or banned saying the three child policy is the
| way to go forward.
|
| Any suggestions?
| tweedledee wrote:
| Bill Maher praises China for being a 'serious country' and
| contrasts it to the non-serious US. That is pretty mainstream.
| There seem to be many people, both left and right, who see
| China's actions on clamping down unfettered capitalism and
| decadence as a good thing. In my view it's a mixed bag. I think
| the real driving force is in preparation of a US/China conflict
| which is starting to feel inevitable.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > a pro-Chinese Western Community
|
| If you mean pro-CCP, they have been at war with the rest of the
| world since the end of WW2. So understand what you're talking
| about.
|
| The reason they've built hypersonic missiles and nuclear
| ballistic submarines is to point them at the US.
|
| BRI is to gain ports for their navy.
|
| > the last handful of bold moves
|
| Virtually everything you've heard from the CCP is self-serving
| propaganda with no verifiable numbers.
|
| They're facing an enormous demographic problem which the
| 3-child policy won't fix, and their stalled economy is
| revealing the mismanagement that decades of rapid growth hid -
| 70% of personal savings go into real estate investments, which
| are semi-Ponzi schemes.
|
| Half of China's food and energy are imported, and the CCP
| relies on US capital markets. These 3 make China incredibly
| vulnerable, contrary to the image projected by the CCP.
| djohnston wrote:
| In the West privately funded media has increased polarisation
| over the last 50 years, so having stronger public investments in
| media could be helpful to stop this pervasive divisiveness. China
| has the opposite configuration where the state controls all
| information and you'll be re-educated if you say the wrong thing
| loud enough. These are both extremes that are undesirable IMO.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I wish PBS was better funded and supported, maybe look to BBC
| as an example to emulate. Though BBC also has non-new
| programming (drag race!).
|
| The problem is trusting government. I don't trust either
| parties here so I would lean toward a for-profit system with
| heavier regulation.
|
| It looks like the Fairness Doctrine is no more? Anyone have
| better knowledge here than I do who can give some background?
|
| From what I kind of know it used to require broadcasters to
| dedicate programming to actual factual news in order to use
| govt spectrum. Also dictated journalism ethics like letting
| subjects comment.
|
| Also seems like this deregulation was the impetus for (what i
| consider dangerous and harmful) alt reality 'news' like the
| murdoch empire and Alex Jones characters.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everyth...
|
| http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47669.html
| asteroidbelt wrote:
| BBC has shifted from being neutral in the recent years, and
| there are demands to stop public funding of BBC.
|
| No, BBC today is a bad example. BBC 50 years ago, I don't
| know.
| nradov wrote:
| The Fairness Doctrine only ever applied to broadcast TV and
| radio because spectrum was a limited resource. It never
| applied to cable, satellite, or online services. Those were
| never really deregulated because they were hardly regulated
| in the first place.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Makes sense. Broadcast is a shell of what it was in
| viewership. Interestingly it seems Republicans might be the
| ones pushing government intervention on those new platforms
| (FB) since they feel censored.
| guilhas wrote:
| I think a polarized society, means there is a big problem in
| that society that needs fixing. Like when a project is forked
| because people think it should have other goals/values. I don't
| think we can split society, so that problem needs to be found
| and addressed, so people can trust each other and the
| government again.
|
| Meaning having all the correct facts, and information, will not
| fix polarization, only societal evolution
| pasabagi wrote:
| It's not really opposites, though. Private media is highly
| centralized, and the people involved are also highly involved
| in politics (Rupert Murdoch, for instance). In China, high up
| party members are generally very wealthy, and wealthy people
| generally are highly involved in the party, so it's the same
| politically-well-connected elite that would be involved in
| media in the west in any case - it's just backed up by formal
| censorship, explicit government rule, etc.
|
| China is more extreme, and more explicit about the link between
| politics and media, but it's broadly speaking the same system.
|
| PS: this is especially true of countries like the UK, where
| extremely stringent and abusable libel laws regularly cause
| financial troubles for small presses that upset powerful
| people.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Right. That something is private is by itself meaningless.
| This is a major problem in the West that many don't seem to
| understand, that the lines between the private and public
| sector are worthless and blurred if the private sector is
| powerful enough to function as a de facto arm of the
| government. Raw power is what counts. In terms of the media,
| CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, WaPo, Fox, etc, are all de facto regime
| media outlets (Google and Facebook fall broadly into the same
| camp because they control the flow of information). The same
| oligarchic milieu that influences or runs the government
| influences or runs the media. They all go to the same
| schools, live in the same neighborhoods, go to the same
| parties, etc, etc. You don't need a Legion of Doom to
| orchestrate anything or any planning. Common interests and a
| similar lust for power causes a coincidental synthesis of
| mutually constructive arrangements that the same group finds
| beneficial. It happens naturally, as it were.
|
| Another threat is foreign ownership of media. In Poland,
| where public media is explicitly controlled by whatever
| ruling party happens to be in power, there was recently a big
| media circus around introducing some media investment
| restrictions by foreign companies. Over 80% of Polish media
| are foreign owned, much of it in German hands, but not only.
| Best of all, it's not presented as representing the interests
| of those countries or groups. That's a huge problem for
| national security and a symptom of the neocolonial control
| the country is under (Piketty once described Poland as
| "foreign-owned"). Recent media brouhaha was triggered by an
| American media company (owned by Discovery). It's one thing
| to read about another POV. It's another to have foreign
| interests presented as your own and concealing their true
| nature. The Western media meanwhile routinely convince the
| Western public that anything against Western oligarchic
| interest in that region is fascist and other favorite
| epithets. They groom the public to view what's happening in a
| way that is untrue and benefits oligarchs. Colonialism still
| exists. We just call it other things now.
|
| Also, divisiveness is not the primary problem, but
| downstream. If we focus on division, we risk throwing truth
| under the bus, especially in this climate of subjectivist
| "narratives". We are vulnerable to saying "to heal divisions,
| we must accept a common narrative". Heh, sorry, nope. That's
| the tyranny of the lie and the narrative makers (hence the
| foaming at the mouth by those who are losing control of the
| "official narrative"). The only thing worth uniting around is
| something true and something capable and worthy enough to
| function as a unifier. You need enough in common to create a
| workable society where coexistence and cooperation are
| possible. If we can't find something like that, then sorry,
| but you have no viable society.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| What do you think of France where the media is highly
| political, but politics no bi-polarized (13 parties in big
| elections, 5 large movement/ideologies)?
|
| We even learn at school that no writing can be objective
| since humans write them but what matters is to identify
| ideological stances and read enough subjective angles to have
| at least an opinion on where stakeholders stand if not "the
| truth"?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Sounds like a mature approach where many voices are heard
| and allowed to be shared and understood. France puts faith
| in citizens while other countries try to control those
| choices and voices.
| pasabagi wrote:
| Sounds nice. One of the things I've been dwelling on
| recently is the degree to which economic geography creates
| the conditions for an effective press. Germany and France
| are both really regional, in the sense that you have loads
| of competing regional elites, each with their own take on
| things. In the UK, it's very centralized, so there's a much
| greater penalty to your career if you ruffle feathers, and
| the views expressed in the media are necessarily fairly
| narrow (for instance, Jeremy Corbyn, despite getting about
| 40% of the popular vote in 2017, had basically no positive
| media coverage throughout his tenure).
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Private media is highly centralized, and the people
| involved are also highly involved in politics
|
| Do you really think that people who write about politics can
| ever resist the urge to try to shape politics?
|
| Why would a government journalist be any better?
| raincom wrote:
| In the west, governments collude with the media entities.
| This collusion is not discussed in the mainstream or in the
| academia that much, as the latter is part of that collusive
| cooperative. In China, CCP controls the media. The difference
| between China and the West is one level of indirection.
| qqtt wrote:
| A bit naive to assume there isn't quite a bit of centralized
| control of media in the West. Not only are the media largely
| owned by a scant few large conglomerates - the government
| itself also gets routinely involved in controlling the
| narrative.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html
| neltnerb wrote:
| The seemingly obvious middle ground is that there cannot be
| too much concentration of news station ownership.
|
| Which used to be the rule, but the rules weren't quite
| bulletproof enough so now Sinclair and a handful of others
| own far more news outlets than they should by a better
| metric. I'm not saying there's anything illegal about it, but
| I think it should be fixed.
|
| But I also think that if someone made their fortune in
| industry, they probably shouldn't own newspapers. It's so
| much conflict of interest... it seems like sometimes it can
| be okay, but only if there's a really well enforced legal
| firewall between the interests of the owner and the news
| reporting. That's hard to manage if the owner isn't
| disconnected from decisions about what to fund or whether to
| promote staff critical of them.
|
| There could be a middle ground, but if we can't define what
| rules constitute a fair middle ground it seems to just get
| worked around until effectively a few private voices dictate
| an awful lot of the spin applied to stories.
| ralusek wrote:
| The west increasingly has completely independent news sources
| via places like YouTube.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| These are all corporate sources that openly brag about
| censoring content. My favorite is when they censored an
| academic conference on censorship. Straight out of a Monty
| Python skit.
|
| https://www.mintpressnews.com/media-censorship-conference-
| ce...
|
| The HN discussion:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26008217
| ffwszgf wrote:
| A lot of these channels will have to leave the platform as
| anti fake news and disinformation laws get tougher
| ipaddr wrote:
| Maybe that's the silver lining.
|
| Anyone who's opinion exists outside of the current
| groupthink is forced to leave these big platforms. It
| makes it harder for the average person within this group
| to express themselves because these platforms make it
| easy. But many will and new platforms will form outside
| of big tech. These new platforms will have time and space
| to rethink how they operate and perhaps they will bring
| in a new era of consumer control.
| cute_boi wrote:
| I guess its already happening. Many channels were
| complaining of shadow bans & demonetization.
| andreilys wrote:
| Thankfully we live in a society now where "the media" does
| not have carte Blanche on controlling the narrative.
|
| Plenty of dissenting folks using non-traditional outlets like
| podcasts and YouTube that have an audience that rivals or is
| larger than legacy media.
|
| Of course, this would not be possible in China where any
| dissenting voices would quickly be extinguished.
| _pmf_ wrote:
| > over the last 50 years
|
| This goes back to the Enlightenment, and has historically been
| considered a good thing when contrasted to state or church
| doctrines.
|
| Happy to help.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Publicly funded media will present the views of those in power.
| That does not mean it will be any less self-serving than
| private media. Government newspapers have a sorry history.
| jollybean wrote:
| The current state of Western Media is not very nice, but it is
| far from 'extreme'.
| johnebgd wrote:
| Tell that to Alex Jones...
| jeswin wrote:
| > These are both extremes that are undesirable IMO.
|
| The problem with putting them in the same sentence is that it
| equates them, in the same way "very fine people on both sides"
| did.
|
| Being sent to a reeducation camp, keeping a billion plus
| population exposed only to propaganda, a total lack of free
| speech, and openly disappearing people (like Gedhun Choekyi
| Nyima of Tibet) is not in the same bracket as any of the other
| ills you were mentioning.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm not sure many in the west would see divisiveness as a
| negative, in so much that it seems necessary to reach an stable
| equilibrium. Yes, one side will find the other side's position
| infuriating, but China is the result of what happens when one
| side completely wins over the other. Because there is no
| equilibrium to be had, they can only emphasize unity.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| Not defending China's idea at all, but with private media in
| this country having a financial motivation to knowingly lie
| is pretty reprehensible. They have the right to do it sure,
| and they should, but if a good portion of a populace lives in
| a fiction, that isn't great. And to be clear while leftist
| stuff can be extreme, sure, the current major problem is
| right wing extremist lies are clearly more detrimental just
| because of their popularity. It is not really a both sides
| issue.
| More-nitors wrote:
| > with private media in this country having a financial
| motivation to knowingly lie is pretty reprehensible.
|
| That can be balanced-out with other media outlets voicing
| other side.
|
| And... not attacking China's great political unification,
| having and using politics to censor out a lot of government
| corruption that ultimately hurts its own people... doesn't
| look great
|
| (no 'political balance-of-power' + no freedom-of-
| speech/press + no-election: the government officials can de
| facto do whatever they want, from small things like
| accepting bribes for not noticing fake-food factories, to
| uh... ok I'll stop now.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| >> _with private media in this country having a financial
| motivation to knowingly lie is pretty reprehensible._
|
| > _That can be balanced-out with other media outlets
| voicing other side._
|
| It's entirely possible to counter balance something with
| a lie, neither the original or response being the truth,
| which doesn't help inform the viewers either.
| th0ma5 wrote:
| None of that is refuting what I am saying. I agree with
| all of that.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| If you want to balance a system dynamically, you want
| negative, not positive feedback loops. The latter will just
| grow until they shake the system apart.
|
| In other words: polarisation is useful when it's transient.
| Some issue causes people to divide and work out some
| consensus, and then divisions die down. A persistent divison
| that becomes its own end is destructive.
| burrows wrote:
| > so having stronger public investments in media could be
| helpful to stop this pervasive divisiveness.
|
| Completely unsubstantiated nonsense claim.
|
| > China has the opposite configuration where the state controls
| all information and you'll be re-educated if you say the wrong
| thing loud enough.
|
| Alarmist gobbledygook.
| johnebgd wrote:
| The west just needs to reimplement the fairness doctrine:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
| ipaddr wrote:
| In Canada media is controlled by a handful of private companies
| who are well connected to political factions. The public
| broadcaster while generally left tries to stay neutral. Small
| publications are ignored and usually shutout to the point of them
| needing to sue to ask a question.
|
| Private or public if the media is controlled by a small club of
| wealthy and/or connected players you have an unhealthy and not
| very free press.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The public broadcaster is "left" _by US standards_ , but is
| pretty much bang in the center for the rest of the Anglophone
| countries.
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