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CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

nytimes.com

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Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#51

Post by swebs »

scohesc wrote: post #18

It's a bit telling when a media giant like CBS can't strike a happy medium by you know - both not censoring it in the US and censoring it in china - instead, choosing to censor the whole thing outright on the entire platform. It's almost like all these American companies are moving en masse to do business in China with the sole purpose of increasing profits every single quarter, irrespective of (and arguably, now enc…

It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#52

Post by gruez »

uberman wrote: post #44

Before damming CBS you might want to hear their motive. According to them the 90 second segment was removed because "such a sequence would endanger CBS executives on the ground in China" . If that is the true motive, I personally give them a pass. If this is about preserving safety of employees and not about profit, can anyone condemn them? This article written by a friend of one of the performers in the 90 second an…

> If that is the true motive

I'm going to go on a limb and say the true motive is financial, the motive for PR is "safety".

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#53

Post by Chazprime »

nickysielicki wrote: post #26

I feel like free speech has never been under such attack. Culturally, we don't care about it, we find offensive content more offensive than censorship of offensive content. Politically, they can censor you completely if they want to by hitting you with an NSL. EFF says that happens 60 times a day. The most hard hitting journalist in the west, Julian Assange, was just put in jail. I'm scared about the future. It's not…

Julian Assange is a journalist? Not sure I agree with that labeling.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#54

Post by slantyyz »

When I watched the show last week and that censored bit showed up, I thought it was actually a gag and not for real.

The animated Jonathan Coulton bits on that show are my favorite part of the show, they're quite well done and funny. The show, however, is overly politicized. When compared to the Good Wife, it is much less about fighting interesting legal cases now than it is about US politics.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#55

Post by derefr »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #37
save_ferris wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their decision to universally censor the content may have been contractually obligated by the Chinese. Not saying that's definitely the case, but it makes sense. If one version of the content appears on approved channels in China and another uncensored version can be seen via VPN, that certainly wouldn't make the government look good. As far as Americans using China as a means to increase profits, that's capitalism w…

To be fair they should censor any content that would be subversive in India. Then why stop there? Make sure all media is vetted by all nations for moral and political purity.

They don’t care about fairness, they care about profit (or rather, they care about how much their share value would drop if they sacrificed a given source of profit.) If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China, then said American corporation is basically constitutionally incapable of leaving China (if it’s structured in the usual way with a board whose positions are controlled by shareholder election.) And right now, it seems that China is the only market that traders see as large enough to make them short the stock when you do anything to mess with it.

Private corporations, public corporations that are still founder-controlled, and “public-benefit” corporations might be immune to this effect, but your average traded C-Corp or S-Corp won’t be.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#56

Post by save_ferris »

swebs wrote: post #51
scohesc wrote: post #18

It's a bit telling when a media giant like CBS can't strike a happy medium by you know - both not censoring it in the US and censoring it in china - instead, choosing to censor the whole thing outright on the entire platform. It's almost like all these American companies are moving en masse to do business in China with the sole purpose of increasing profits every single quarter, irrespective of (and arguably, now enc…

It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"

OP posted an article on why an American company chose to accommodate said authoritarian communist regime, against the principles of our domestic media culture. What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism?

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#57

Post by LeoNatan25 »

save_ferris wrote: post #12
yumraj wrote: post #2

So US media censors US content, containing bits about China censors, due to financial and other unknown reasons, but when it comes to US happenings, good and bad, they want and have complete freedom of press and speech. Oh, the irony.

Unfortunately, that's the cost of courting a massive market backed by an authoritarian regime. Personally, I don't agree with it, but Capitalism isn't inherently moral. China has such a massive trade presence globally that companies are willing to abandon domestic values to make them happy. The media certainly aren't the only party guilty of this (tech & military companies selling surveillance technology, etc.) It's…

Why not hate everyone equally, game and players? It takes players to have a game.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#60

Post by [deleted] »

swebs wrote: post #43
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously think they should've cancelled a series they've been working on for the past decade due to 120 seconds of content? Let me be the first to say I'm glad the writers didn't do that. If you watch the show, you'll quickly discover that the writers have been given an immense amount of creative freedom. The Good Fight makes a lot of strong political statements that I don't think would fly on many other plat…

>The Good Fight makes a lot of strong political statements that I don't think would fly on many other platforms. Such as?

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