A couple of notes from China caught my attention this afternoon.

The China Post (Taiwan) published a commentary recently on the difficulty China is having moving toward a “public media” model. That’s the term Qian Gang, director of the China Media Project at the Journalism and Media Studies Centre of the University of Hong Kong, uses for a media system that serves the people. He contrasts that with China’s “political media,” which he says serve political interests, and the “commercial media,” which primarily seek profits.

The Taipei Times reports today (Sunday, Aug. 1 in Taiwan) that the government’s Organic Laws and Statutes Bureau has “recommended a statutory ban on government agencies promoting policies and government performance under the guise of news coverage, saying the practice had a negative influence on the role and objectivity of the media in a democracy.” According to the group’s report, this practice allows “governmental agencies … to revise and sensor news coverage. As a result, the media lose their function of advancing and maintaining the public interest.”

This entry was posted by Butler Cain on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Asia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.