Thursday, July 19, 2007

Media

During the discussion in the computer lab about the "truth" that we obtain from the news reminded me something my Chinese teacher told me once. She said that in China, certain topics are locked when searched on Google. When people search for information regarding the mainland China/Taiwan conflict there is a lot of information that cannot be accessed by the general public. Isn't that scary? It made me wonder if there is a similar filter in the US system that we just don't know about.

2 comments:

Tim said...

Check out the homepage for this course and see some of the words that automatically get deleted from text messages in China, words like "democracy" and "protest"--while I think there are many who watch that our government doesn't violate our free speech guarantees, we really have too few protections from government or corporate interests who will do whatever is necessary to know what we think and then to try to steer it toward action or inaction on our parts. Censorship of certain "strong" language or images of body parts may function as preconditioning for more serous intrusions on our free speech.

Melody said...

Two of my mom's friends "fled" from mainland China and came here because they wanted to have more than one kid - they applied for citizenship as political refugees. They haven't had any more children and miss their families but are afraid they will be arrested if they go back.
They told me about some really frightening stuff that's right here in the bay area...
One time they went into a Chinese bookstore that seemed to be full of beautifully photographed and designed books that described China's tourist spots and the history behind them. But when they opened the books to the places they knew, the photos had all been redone to make the places seem pristine and beautiful, when they were actually filthy and poverty-stricken.
They said the history behind them had been changed as well - China's current communist president was credited for all the achievements and stuff - stuff that had been accomplished by the president before before the communist party took over.
The lady behind the counter noticed they were speaking mandarin with Bejing accents and began following them around the shop, asking them why they were in America, how long they'd be staying, when they would be going back, and if they'd like to buy something with a credit card (I guess because she wanted to check their ID's to see if they were citizens?).

Scary, scary stuff.