So, Obama has been censored by China, despite being invited to visit China.
“Southern Weekend,” a very outspoken publication in China, interviewed President Obama. And when citizens of China got their copy of the magazine delivered to them...it was missing the interview. Front and back pages simply missing from the paper, as if torn out. The Post Office claims that the magazines arrived that way.
This is not the first and only instance, either. Before he even made it over to China, entire sections of President Obama's inauguration speech were removed by CCTV. Xinhua removed any sentences that might allow their citizens to feel animosity towards China (words such as Communism were excluded from Chinese translations of the speech).
Obama's recent speech in China finally gave him a chance to discuss censorship and open-Internet policies. And even in lieu of China's repeated censorship of information, there were those who claimed that the mainstream was not concerned with internet censorship.
Let's look at public image. You're a nation that censors information. People are calling you out on it, internally and externally. Which of the following do you do:
a) continue censoring the people speaking out against your censorship
b) pretend like your population doesn't care
c) justify your stance
If you said C (as in China), congrats--you've got it right. I have no illusions: asking China to simply cease censorship is like asking Rush Limbaugh to tone it down for a bit. It's just not going to happen. But China CAN justify its position. "Why do you censor people, China?" "Well, we do it for ___, ____ and ____."
Basic PR: pretending that something isn't happening or isn't important when it's both is DUMB.
If you address the issue and show why it's happening, it's much better and helps your image a lot more.
Just for thought.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
This makes me laugh. I guess China had never cared too much about what people think. They haven't really had great PR in the past, and I guess they don't plan on starting any time soon.
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of like we learned about in 5910 today: good ethics IS good PR. I say kind of because saying China is ethical may be a stretch. But if they were to justify their censorship (and maybe they do justify it, I honestly don't know much about it) then at least they are being somewhat honest about why they're doing it, which gives them some credibility, regardless of whether people agree with it or not.
ReplyDeleteOh China…when will they ever learn that they cannot continue to censor their people when they can get information through so many other outlets than what the government provides them? This is a ridiculous situation made worse by their lack of response. And pretending like an article has been cut out of a magazine didn’t happen and was some sort of mistake by the printers is the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard yet.
ReplyDeleteYou simply can’t smother a nation of people into ignorance. It’s not how the world works and China will have to deal with the problems that they have ignored for so long. PR nightmare.
I agree, I don't think that they are approaching the matter in the correct way. People will start to lose trust in their government if they have to continue to wonder what is being withheld from them. I feel like China has gone a little overboard--there is just so much that they are censoring, and some of it for seemingly no appearant reason. As the government, they should be addressing their people's concerns, not simply ignoring them as if they didn't exist. Can you imagine the scandle that would errupt if a company ignored its workers' concerns? So then why is it okay for an entire governmental body to withhold important information and ignore its population's argurments??
ReplyDelete@Katie Cahill
ReplyDeleteOne form of ethics is to do what you want so long as you are comfortable with the consequences. But you have to be up-front about it.
If China took that stance, they'd have some form of ethics