This isn't "the west" cowing down before China, but a private, profit-seeking news organization deciding on a more pragmatic (albeit cowardly) option after what must have been a big cost-benefit analysis.
Sadly, this is the future of news. No news organization can today afford to antagonize one of its largest (potential) markets simply to strive for some higher journalistic zeal.
Take Google for instance. Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground against the Chinese government and squandered the entire country away to competitors? Whatever halo they earned when they made that decision has long vanished.
Edit: Morals and halos don't pay journalist salaries.
"Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground against the Chinese government and squandered the entire country away to competitors?"
Yes, me. It's the single factual act of Google's history that sticks in my mind. It says to me someone near the top will lose revenue to make an ethical stand. I can't remember too many other concrete examples of this in large companies.
Google didn't stand its ground. Google also did a cost-benefit analysis and realized that China wasn't going to let a foreign company control its internet and monitor its data, which in turn was monitored by the US government. Further cost-benefit analysis by Google determined that it was more beneficial to tell everyone it was for principles.
This is what Google employees from China have told me. I'm stating it as fact because from my perspective, with the information I have, it has appeared as almost fact to me.
That's the cover story, yes. The whole truth is a little more nuanced.
Google abandoned China because the Chinese government was hacking and stealing its technology, rerouting its traffic to homegrown and government-subsidized competitors like Baidu, and generally making the value of the market not worth the hassle. Google wanted to do business in China, but basically it couldn't. The government's demands to censor and monitor search results were just icing on a tall, thick cake.
To whatever extent Google based its decision to cede the Chinese market on ethical principles, that's wonderful and to be commended. But ethics probably had 10% to do with it. Principal always drives principle.
FWIW, so did I in 2010. But what benefit - strategic or tactical - does that hold for Google today? Ask most people today if Google "does no evil", and you'll get a sense of what happened to that moral halo.
In the same vein, can the moral gains for Bloomberg from running these two stories outweigh the monetary/reporting freedom losses that will come too?
Well, just like in the case of human beings, companies have to continue to not screw people over to be viewed of as moral and/or ethical. Just like we have to not steal, harm, enslave, etc. each single day to be considered ethical people.
Maybe someone can get away with not doing the right thing once or twice and still be viewed as an overall ethical person, but just because they do the right thing once or twice does not earn them that honor.
Oh, you have no idea how badly Zuckerburg wants to be successful in China. Zuck has been learning Mandarin for a long time, I really think a primary motivation for that has to do with plans of really getting going in China. When he visited China in 2010, the first two places he went to were Baidu's and Alibaba's offices. There was supposedly a partnership in the works but much to Zuck's chagrin it ended up never materializing.
The company has been trying on and on again to get into China somehow, Sandberg has been on the record saying "China's the big one" (she talked a lot about it in the Charlie Rose interview from some time back), Zuck himself I think was scheduled to give China another visit but those plans were presumably scrapped in the post-NSA-leaks environment.
Now more than ever, it is clear that no American social networking media company will ever have substantial market share in China. The Chinese government will never let it fly, it's as simple as that.
Now more than ever, it is clear that no American social networking media company will ever have substantial market share in China. The Chinese government will never let it fly, it's as simple as that.
A free market in Internet companies in China is not possible until regime change in China. I think a change in government in China to a post-communist system is moderately possible, although various geopolitical trade-offs have caused this to take longer in China than it did in most parts of eastern Europe. The bubble economy in China makes it likely that there will be internal pressure there for regime change when the bubble pops.
> I think a change in government in China to a post-communist system is moderately possible
Transitions in other Asian countries from authoritarian (which is what China is right now) to democratic governments typically coincided with the populace reaching a certain level of wealth and education.
I don't see that level being reached in China any time soon because the sort of accelerated export-oriented growth that worked in other Asian countries won't work when you have more than a billion people. China is still very far from the levels of wealth and prosperity in Korea or Taiwan when they transitioned to democracy.
> Zuck has been learning Mandarin for a long time, I really think a primary motivation for that has to do with plans of really getting going in China.
I'm pretty sure the main reason is that his wife is ethnically Chinese. For business purposes, a translator is more than sufficient. And from what I remember, he gave this up after a year of private tutoring because he wasn't getting anywhere - you really have to make a big time commitment to learn a language like Chinese.
Facebook strikes you as the company that would have principles and morals? The reason they are not in China is because the government wouldn't let them, with or without censorship. They are too much of a "threat to the unity of the society" - you know, the typical authoritarian excuse.
This is why I've always believed Wikileaks and whistleblowing/leaking are together the "future of news" (at least real news, that uncover truths).
Wikileaks isn't motivated by making a "profit", other than its immediate needs for survival. As for "leaking", it's already been one of the main sources for "investigative journalism", it's just that in the past it was more of a "push" thing from journalists, to try and get the classified documents, and in the future it will be more of a "pull" thing, where the leaks will come to them, and they just need to figure out what's the story from them.
This is especially important when media entities can't have "boots on the ground" anymore, and they need to be a lot leaner - blog-level leaner. And it's all good as long as they keep their integrity, which ultimately is what really matters about a news agency, no matter how small or big, and we can already see most, if not all, of the media entities have become corrupt already, so it's not like we should put our trust in the big news agencies only anymore.
I expect Greenwald's news agency to be very successful if they have a document leak platform on the site, and promote it very well, and put it front and center on the site, because now everyone knows Greenwald has integrity, so a lot of future whistleblowers will coming to him, because they trust him, just like Snowden did.
The real, government-breaking stories of the future, will be coming from small/lean news agencies that have a very high-level of integrity. However, we, the people, also need to push for much bigger whistleblowing protections, unless we expect every whistleblower from now on to literally throw away their lives for us, which is really quite an unreasonable expectation, even from most potential whistleblowers.
The west should make it absolutely clear that it considers these politically motivated actions illegal trade barriers and that it will retaliate.
While some companies - most notably Google - do the right thing against their own interests, you are right that this isn't something that can be expected of profit driven corporations in general. That's exactly why governments should act.
But we can all do somthing to make it clear this is unacceptable:
If you think this is unacceptable, consider that the nytimes, where this story was published, has also held back or failed to publish articles critical of the US on multiple occasions in the recent past - wiretapping under bush, Iraq war, torture, wikileaks. That's not to say they are a propaganda organ or always toe the line, but they have killed a significant story just like this (phone tapping) because of US pressure, and they are one of the more critical US news outlets.
I don't think we should make this into a battle between East and West, as the nytimes has framed it here, it is a battle between corporate and state interests and those they govern, over who owns the news, which to a large extent defines the limits of our thought. That happens in every country, and with every sufficiently influential news org.
These things are always a matter of degree and subjective judgement. I have made up my mind. Systematically preventing criticism of a ruling elite that has no democratic legitimacy whatsoever is on a different scale than what happens in the US or Europe (which is bad enough).
I'm not in favor of a large scale trade war or boycott. But in this very specific instance, where one company - Google - has been thrown out of China for taking a stand, and another company with global ambitions benefits from it, I think blocking the latter is not disproportionate.
(I'm not in any way affiliated with Google. In fact, Google is one of my main competitors)
Not to mention the past and present of news, in most cases. One reason I enjoy reading the Economist is that they seem to take a peculiar glee in describing the scissoring-out of their articles by the authorities in various places, from China to a US prison.
Not true. That (At least to me) proved that Google stands for ethics for ever.
I am not simply saying this as an observer. I am saying this as someone who is impacted by the choice google made.
We are an Android shop based in US with 20% of revenue coming in from India. I am sure if Google didn't make that choice, 30% of our revenue today would have been from China (which today is less than 1%). We are happy we lost that 30% revenue for better human rights.
Future? This is the way it has always been, and we have just been fools to believe otherwise. It was only after Saddam Hussein had fallen that we learned that for years CNN had moderated it's news about his regime in order to maintain a presence in the country. Today "access" is still such a big deal in network news, it's extremely likely that many more similar stories of news organizations keeping themselves in check in order to maintain that access could be told today. About regimes, about our own government, about corporations, about powerful individuals.
It's ironic that the news media has advanced so far in attempting to mold themselves as some sort of aloof and apart institution, some form of abstract art with no holds to the mundane world of everyday lives and things. And yet at the same time they have become such big business that they are plugged into, and often complicit with, so many of the power structures of the world.
True, but if many companies do this on a wide range of sectors then wouldn't it be hard, if not impossible, to distinguish "the West cowing down" and "private orgnisations being more pragmatic"? I'd say it's a dangrous move, whose consequences must be vigilently watched.
The difference between this and Google is that whether or not Google operates in China, the world outside of China is not affected. People everywhere else still get the same search results. But if Bloomberg decides that it's better to report less negatively in English to its audiences in the whole world in order to make a profit from the Chinese market, it's not the Chinese audience, but the outside world that's gonna be hurt.
>This isn't "the west" cowing down before China, but a private, profit-seeking news organization deciding on a more pragmatic (albeit cowardly) option after what must have been a big cost-benefit analysis.
Well, it is. Because if the US Government would have had a firm stance on protecting Freedom of Speech then the cost-analysis for Bloomberg would be - it is not worth pissing off the US Government.
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations." - George Orwell
This might not be a popular opinion, but I honestly think that its not possible for a for profit news organization to be fair and balanced. Specially in todays world when news organizations are owned and operated by a few to drive public opinion.
Ideally news organization should either be donation funded and non-profit. When you start caring about maximizing page-views and start pushing for more profit per pixels, its stops being journalism.
Actually what you suggest already has been tried in various forms, the outcome being stuff like indymedia, but also others. The problem you face here is that having no ads in your news usually means having no money for:
marketing, getting out your stuff. A lot of things are already know anyway somewhere, just that person isn't loud enough or nobody cares.
lawyers, if you don't want to do just public relations then you will need lots of them.
reportages, that often require a lot of preparation, going to other countries, hidden cameras, tons of other equipment, etc.
fallback money in case something goes really bad.
It's sad, but it feels a bit like if there were enough donating people for serious news then the world would already be better and require it way less.
Also you saw the Wikileaks drama. I can be kinda rough.
You're just throwing the baby out with the bath water. The world is not this black and white. Things like this do get called out in the media. Do you think that is just well orchestrated conspiracy to throw us off?
Somewhat ironically, I am in China today, and therefore I can't access the linked article. (Without doing a bunch of convoluted VPN fuckery, I mean.)
But I don't have to read it to know that profit-seeking corporations often kowtow to the various forces that could negatively affect that profit.
Bloomberg has a thing with the totalitarian Chinese regime. The New York Times does favors for the Obama administration. Probably both of them do a lot of bootlicking for their advertisers.
That's why free society needs numerous media outlets, and the legal freedom to report the truth. Because there isn't any obligation for them to report all of the truth, and there isn't any feasible way to force them to do so anyhow.
But at least when we have a bunch of them, the pot will call the kettle black, and remind us how they work.
It is ironic that the editor should compare China to Nazi-era Germany and then go on to suggest that self-censorship is the best way to cover news in China.
On one hand, some courageous Chinese men and women risk everything for freedom and fight their government. On the other hand, it is sad to see these rich American businessmen collaborate with the Chinese autocrats (even though these American businessmen don't need to fear torture etc and the only risk they run is losing some extra money by not being to conduct business in China)
You do realize this is common and goes into both directions?
The same has in lets say Europe, where news don't dare to talk badly about the US or Russia. It's a really common thing. Nobody wants to be the reason for diplomatic troubles and everyone knows how childish all over the planet can act
Sometimes causing that trouble simply doesn't seem worthwhile (even though one really should say that it would their job), maybe also because a lot of them is pretty clear and not surprising in first place. In a world where society wants to be passive (and yeah, even if the startup folks like to exclude themselves we always need point at examples that aren't really part of the startup culture) the motivation to criticize another, economically important country or even your own country isn't exactly high. Sure people might agree and say that they not like it, but changes of policies are pretty much non-existent.
In the past I have found Bloomberg has published exceptionally high quality journalism pieces, specifically those published in their magazine Bloomberg Markets. This year I have become worried by the internal news-terminal spying scandal and increasingly political opinion pieces they publish. The alternative, WSJ, is overall fairly lacking (though credit to some really good investigative work over there too.)
Bloomberg News is in an interesting position that other news companies would never get in to. In the article it mentions Bloomberg is already having trouble in China due to previous articles they wrote and "sales of its financial terminals to state enterprises have slowed." Bloomberg has a near monopoly status on this aggregated financial information. If a company, public or private, chooses not to buy them they are put at a competitive disadvantage (assuming its not being used to spy on them; as private citizens we face this same challenge with some of the online services we use.)
This is the fundamental problem that the West has: we don't have jacobins. We don't have political and intellectual elites that aren't cynical about our own values. It is not like we will punish some extreme Muslim treating his wife like a slave with a jail time. We will just be politically correct and say that's his culture. Liberalism doesn't go well with radicalism for some reason. Radical Liberals like Robespierre, Danton are needed. People who believe in our Western values enough to die in their name. If we are cynical about ourselves how on Earth can we compete with people who commit suicide because they believe in their values more than their life. That's something we really need. We give up our values for nothing. Who cares about China? Our value is freedom of speech and people who don't believe in freedom of speech were guillotined in Revolutionary France. I wish we could have elites today that would be as serious about freedom, liberalism and capitalism as French Revolutionaries were. I hope I will live to see it. Just tired of the apathy in the US. Wake up!
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
-Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945))
> Our value is freedom of speech and people who don't believe in freedom of speech were guillotined in Revolutionary France.
Oh irony of ironies.
That type of thing is exactly why I'm glad there's a dearth of such extreme political fanaticism. In the end, a democracy will only be as intelligent as its people are educated, and even the educated can fall prey to the madness of the masses. Demagogues take control, and soon enough you have actors blacklisted as Commies, mosques being attacked, free speech "advocates" murdering dissenters, and -- maybe -- Chinese nationals being rounded up in the streets.
Radicalism isn't always a bad thing. The problem with the current Western civilization is that we traded radicalism for cynism and liberty for safety. This has nothing to do with education. Goring was very well educated. Most of the population in any country of the world will turn into angry blood thirsty mob - as soon as you leave them without choice. Look at Golden Dawn and Greece. It's not like Greeks becamse angry blood thirsty mob overnight. It was a process of radicalisation in the wrong direction. And if good people in Greece won't wake up and stand up radically for the liberal values the Greece will be lost. And this will be precisely because Greek elites that represent Liberal way of thinking are cynical about their own values. They don't look like they believe in them. They don't look like they believe in anything. And that's not a political class that you will vote for in a crisis. For the crisis you need someone with a balls and vision, not someone mumbling about political correctness and gay rights.
Radicalism is like a knife. In bad hands or minds it will surely do more harm than good, but giving up on it altogether isn't wise. Especially when you are a good guy and refuse to be radical in your efforts to spread good.
You do know that your buddy robespierre is far closer to fanatics like the chinese and radical islamists than is it to liberalism? after all the guy sent anyone who opposed him to the guillotine, he was the architect of the reign of terror in france and it didn't end until he got his head cut.
Why don't use actual real-life cases of similar people, like FDR?
The whole of Europe basically declared war on France when Robespierre was in charge. He wasn't looking for another excuse to kill a few thousand people. He couldn't have having traitors in this circumstance. People forget about historical circumstances when talking about Robespierre. He wasn't looking for excuses to kill people like Stalin. He really had no choice, the spies of these 6 countries really were there, and the country was also on the verge of civil war. And big chunks of French elites supported the outside interventions to restore monarchy. How you deal with that? By talking about gay rights? And Robespierre did know that he will die in the process. When you read him, he says it openly - I know the process will swallow me - he accepted that. All I'm saying is, this is what we need now, if we don't want to continue on this path of cultural suicide.
Stalin was looking for excuses to kill people. For example in 1937 - way before World War 2 started in Europe - he ordered murdering of all officers in the Red Army. If I remember exactly over 30,000 people were killed. There was no enemy for Russia at that time. There was no war going on. Nothing. Just Stalin's paranoia.
Robespierre on the other hand was governing France that was on a verge of a civil war: monarchists vs. republicans/liberals/democrats. He was governing France that was in state of war with basically whole of Europe. Six foreign powers if I remember correctly attacked France at the same time trying to restore the monarchy. With monarchist in France - French people - supporting the foreign powers. You tell me there is no difference? Please elaborate.
Agreed. I have no problem saying that Western culture of tolerance and inclusion and freedom is absolutely better than and superior to some of the other alternatives out there like fanatical Islam and capitalist/socialist China.
Westernism is suffering a crisis of conscious right now. We are trading what we have fought for for things we are afraid of. Wake up, indeed.
> I have no problem saying that Western culture of tolerance and inclusion and freedom is absolutely better than and superior to some of the other alternatives out there like fanatical Islam and capitalist/socialist China.
As long as it stays as just your opinion, that's fine. But I'd have a problem with people who think they should take their opinions on morals & ethics and go force it on other parts of the world. And before anyone asks, no I'm not saying genocide should be ignored because "that's their culture." But going to another place and pointing guns in their face saying "stop being violent!" is a bad idea, imho
That leaves us with an interesting conundrum - what, pray tell, should we do about genocide then?
Actually stopping people has just been taken off the table by you. Sitting around and lamenting the state of the world is only going to make us feel better, but won't do much for people being slaughtered for their race/beliefs/orientation/whatnot.
This is a major reason to support NewsCorp, even for those of you whom are liberal Fox-haters. Murdoch has made no secret of his desire to stay as independent as possible this charade, and has made quite clear that he will avoid the Chinese market if that's what it takes.
>>Murdoch has made no secret of his desire to stay as independent as possible this charade, and has made quite clear that he will avoid the Chinese market if that's what it takes
At best, your comment is a naive and ignorant take on Murdoch and China.
See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/world/asia/26murdoch.html?... for how Murdoch wooed Chinese leaders, how his Star TV man tried to stop the BBC from showing a Tiannamen Square video and how they ultimately dropped the BBC from Star TV's Chinese programming.
Huh. I didn't know that Murdoch had anything in mainland China, thought that he'd avoided it with all of his properties. Thank you for informing me. :)
If I absolutely had to choose between a news organization that twists things for the republicans or one that twists things for the Chinese communist party, I'd choose one that twists things for the Chinese communist party. Since really, that news is not nearly as relevant to me.
The guy is a grade-a warmonger, with a stated mission of shaping public opinion to reach specific political ends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF9HpuZm6-g. There is absolutely no reason to support him or NewsCorp. They've already ruined one journal (the WSJ), let's hope they don't grow more. Use adblock when visiting any NewsCorp website please.
Sadly, this is the future of news. No news organization can today afford to antagonize one of its largest (potential) markets simply to strive for some higher journalistic zeal.
Take Google for instance. Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground against the Chinese government and squandered the entire country away to competitors? Whatever halo they earned when they made that decision has long vanished.
Edit: Morals and halos don't pay journalist salaries.