Tuesday, July 26, 2016

China bans internet news reporting as media crackdown widens...

China’s top internet regulator ordered major online companies including Sina Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. to stop original news reporting, the latest effort by the government to tighten its grip over the country’s web and information industries.

The Cyberspace Administration of China imposed the ban on several major news portals, including Sohu.com Inc. and NetEase Inc., Chinese media reported in identically worded articles citing an unidentified official from the agency’s Beijing office. The companies have “seriously violated” internet regulations by carrying plenty of news content obtained through original reporting, causing “huge negative effects,” according to a report that appeared in The Paper on Sunday.

The agency instructed the operators of mobile and online news services to dismantle “current-affairs news” operations on Friday, after earlier calling a halt to such activity at Tencent, according to people familiar with the situation. Like its peers, Asia’s largest internet company had developed a news operation and grown its team. Henceforth, they and other services can only carry reports provided by government-controlled print or online media, the people said, asking not to be identified because the issue is politically sensitive.

The sweeping ban gives authorities near-absolute control over online news and political discourse, in keeping with a broader crackdown on information increasingly distributed over the web and mobile devices. President Xi Jinping has stressed that Chinese media must serve the interests of the ruling Communist Party. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Watchdog says press freedom in decline in 'new era of propaganda'
  2. China's young reporters give up on journalism: 'You can't write what you want'
  3. China now worst in the world for internet freedom...
  4. China's Sina Weibo is in danger of becoming boring...
  5. Tiger Temple, China's defiant blogger and citizen journalist...
  6. Turkey has jailed more journalists than Iran, Eritrea or China...
  7. Internet censorship is bad in China; is it any better in the "free" world?
  8. China moves to tame microbloggers amid censorship claims..

No comments:

Post a Comment