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Chinese media sucked up by the 5 "awful media sisters"
montblanc Updated: 2004-02-18 09:20
Two major media events happened nearly the same time:
1. CCTV restructuring proof of media reform
see: http://www.ming7.cn/english/doc/2004-02/17/content_306864.htm
2. a right-wing editorialist of the New York Times, William Safire, gets terribly worried about the ongoing media concentration in his country. He wrote an editorial under the title "The five sisters" making an allusion the famed "seven sisters" who once controlled the whole worldwide Oil-business. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/opinion/16SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fWilliam%20Safire
My first reaction was:
"When Safire gets worried about the media concentration, it must be really threatening".
He said among other things:
"But the message in this latest potential merger is not about a clash of media megalomaniacs, nor about a conspiracy driven by "special interests." The issue is this: As technology changes, how do we better protect the competition that keeps us free and different?
You don't have to be a populist to want to stop this rush by ever-fewer entities to dominate both the content and the conduit of what we see and hear and write and say.", said William Safire.
My second reaction was:
"Luckily we have some valuable media coming up in other parts of the world, in China, Russia etc. where they know what a Media dictatorship means and where they have the desire to get other than filtered information".
Next day I opened China Daily and the news about the projected media reform in China took away all my illusions about a possible counterweight to the awful media sisters in the USA.
I fear that Chinese media will be sucked up by the awful sisters.
| The above content represents the view of the author only. |
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