Blame the Reporting

We have had more than a few cases of blaming the reporters this week, in Egypt, Turkey, Russia and China.  These countries want their own view of the world to appear in media and any unapproved views will be dealt with severely.  Sometimes I wonder what our newspapers would look like if we adopted a government perspective on suppression of the "facts" unless the government has sanctioned them.  The one I would use as a perfect example is the case of Wang Xiaolu, a reporter for an influential financial reporting pub called Caijing.  Wang has confessed to a crime on national television that he had published an article that was said to cause "great negative impact on the market".  This story by James Areddy [China Announces Legal Actions Over Market 'Violations', The Wall Street Journal, 1 Sept 2015 ] . See also,https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9033304048882784982#editor/target=post;postID=2185291346291452286;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=23;src=postname    By such a standard, some really good reporters would go to jail in this country, publishing things that cause a negative impact on the market.  We would have a stream of TV journalists going along with them.  The national news broadcasts would take on a different perspective, not wanting to cover both sides of a story [if they still do try to do that]  only the government-approved side.

Nothing would be said about Hillary Clinton's emails.  These involve state secrets and upset many Democrats who run the Office of the President.  Nothing could be said about what the Fed is going to do this month about raising interest rates.  Every time the Fed has a meeting, the market jumps one way or another, and this is bad for stability.  Nothing can be said about opposition candidates for an election to be held a year from this November, because these promote too much "speculation".  We have decided to ban any discussion of any other party except the one in power.  This creates harmony in the political process.   We have banned discussions of illegal immigration since that is a crime and law enforcement will take care of crimes.  There is not much crime here, so no point in manufacturing an issue where one does not exist.  We banned stories on the terrorist attacks in Thailand that reference the religious nature of citizens who went there.  We ban discussions of Uighurs in Thailand, except as they might relate to their terrorist actions against tourists.

This is all about harmony, and it is defined according to the country writing the rules.  While I might disagree with the ACLU on most things, we can agree that censorship like this is not a good thing, though I might pay to see the restrictions on reporting on political candidates until we are closer to the election - say actually in 2016.