China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
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China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
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Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#2This news story is off. Foreign entities have always been forbidden from engaging in media production and publishing in China. While the negative list is updated yearly, this isn't new.
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#3I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over articles written by Google?
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#4I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over articles written by Google?
Most Americans don't seem to trust the press. Faith in "Mass Media" has plummeted to levels appropriate to their reliability on important issues [0].
And the media is a strange place. Something like Joe Rogan's podcast is realistically more mainstream and probably more trusted than most news programs. There will be many examples like that.
[0] https://news.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-med...
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#5I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over articles written by Google?
What does non-profit news look like? A few rich people starting non-profit and making news might not be very trustworthy. I guess you mean a wide group of donors. But non-profits have a lot of trouble raising money without controversy. Imagine trying to solicit donations when every other story alienates half the donors.
And it doesn't really answer a lot of the hard questions. Who is going to actually write the articles, what's their political angle, and what are their career objectives? And how do you handle delicate topics with evolving information in a neutral way?
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#6This news story is off. Foreign entities have always been forbidden from engaging in media production and publishing in China. While the negative list is updated yearly, this isn't new.
This is not a story of foreign capital, but private capital.
Information is power, Xi wants 100% control over it. It's probably more important than controlling the Armed Forces in the long run.
If you put people in a bubble only let them see what you want to see, it's pretty easy to control them, it doesn't matter who they are.
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#7I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over articles written by Google?
At least theoretically, if customers actually valued accuracy, they would punish news organizations that were not accurate. A for profit newspaper would need to respond to the changing market.
A not for profit newspaper could easily have a backer with other motivations, where they might be willing to sacrifice accuracy to push a particular agenda.
I am not sure that the problem is the news. I do not think people really care if they get accurate news.
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#8I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over articles written by Google?
Google writes news articles?
The issue is freedom of expression. If individuals are allowed to speak, write and disseminate information and opinion freely and own businesses, why can't they charge for it? Well, that's a news organisation. It's not that you necessarily trust any one individual publisher, it's that a range of views are freely represented in the press generally.
The Chinese constitution used to guarantee free speech, but the massive disconnect between what the constitution said and what was actually allowed was so gargantuan it became a bit of an embarrassment in the post-Tiananmen era. Since then the constitution has been revised extensively to be less blatantly contrary to reality.
Totally incidental aside, but one of the inciting incidents for constitutional revision was a court case brought by a person fired from their job for being short, where the actual job had no real requirement for them being any particular height. They won the case based on the constitution's barring discrimination, but the fact that a court had granted a right to someone based on the constitution was so novel and unheard of that it caused massive conniptions in the CCP.
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#9This news story is off. Foreign entities have always been forbidden from engaging in media production and publishing in China. While the negative list is updated yearly, this isn't new.
This is not a story of foreign capital, but private capital. Information is power, Xi wants 100% control over it. It's probably more important than controlling the Armed Forces in the long run. If you put people in a bubble only let them see what you want to see, it's pretty easy to control them, it doesn't matter who they are.
Xi does not want power for himself. Xi wants power to remain in the hands of the party and CPC is laying the foundation of governance model for a robust state in the 21st century that also (TBD) does not inhibit economic and technological development. It is reasonable to argue against that goal (statist socialism) but imho superficial to frame this as yet another power grab by an individual. He is simply the tip of a consensus block in CPC. Historically, Xi represents the ‘adjustment of CPC to global conditions while maintaining continuity of the party’ post Nixon era re-engagement and re-evaluations.
Re: China proposes prohibiting private investment in news service sector
#10I wonder why people don't demand more non-profit news or why articles written by for-profit organizations are as trusted as they are. Why should people trust articles written by NyT over articles written by Google?
At least theoretically, if customers actually valued accuracy, they would punish news organizations that were not accurate. A for profit newspaper would need to respond to the changing market. A not for profit newspaper could easily have a backer with other motivations, where they might be willing to sacrifice accuracy to push a particular agenda. I am not sure that the problem is the news. I do not think people real…
Do people not care about accuracy? Or have they just given up?