Something I was thinking about today, how Typepad being banned in China doesn’t actually constitute as news, it’s an incident. It’s something that definitely warrants some attention, surely in the blogging community because it affects us directly, and in small, alternative press which is what they exist for. To log and report stories that don’t make it to the news media. Its lack of reportage is not a travesty, upsetting or something to get incensed about because in the scheme of China’s abuse of human rights, it’s pretty low grade. Sites being banned has been happening for seven years now, and high profile sites such as all newspaper sites in Hong Kong, CNN and BBC (although sometimes they manage to slip through) a service in the US doesn’t really compare to the banning of those large media outlets where most of the world do get their news from.
I think this because I was given some media contacts and was asked to write to them, as tell them that this was happening and maybe they would make a story out of it. As I started to do so, I was thinking, “It’s a story but not for the newswires.” It’s not big enough of a story to bump the problems in the Middle East, the recount in Taiwan, and other far more pressing concerns on the world off that headline priority.
Is it not important then? Of course it is, it is a blow to freedom of information and freedom of speech in China. Its shutting more people who want to talk about what the government deems to be “sensitive” on typepad contains information that they do not want people within the country to get their hands on. It’s not be ignored and should be, logged, which is what I was doing in the last few days. Log the event, put it out there, make sure that enough people know about this and have it published in some ways out there on the internet. Those things needs to be done, because it them remains on the public domain, and thus exists as an incident. On March 25th China banned a foreign service of private websites and shut off a kind of information flow they do not want going in.
This piece of news remains there as long as this site and those which put it up exists on the web. And it’s searchable for the future. What this will be used for is, when the next time this happens it goes into the “To Watch List” it happened once in 2003, once again in 2004 and it may happen again in 2005 or not. If it happens in more regular intervals, it’s time to take note, and know that China is closing up and being even more vigilant in the ways news spreads. And each time it does happen, it helps bring to attention that 81% of jailed cyber dissendents exists in China and for me to note the increase of numbers since November which was the last time I checked and counted and spread the piece of news. And if and when (and hopefully not) that more and more sites are banned, journalists and academics can then trace the events and the time period they occur and take some conclusions out of it with a long term view in mind.
Which is why something like blogging is important, and the alternative press does need to exist. It will never supercede the need and infrastructure of huge media conglomerates, someone has to pay for the flights, room, food and board of professional journalists, but the smaller press of those on the ground, and the stories that aren’t as important still needs to be told and logged for future reference otherwise it doesn’t exists and what the future holds simply exists in a vacuum.
I did my part in the last few days bringing attention to something that won’t make it to the big media outlet, I made, as I said I wanted to, put this into the passing thought file of a thousand people. Which is exactly what happened, and then I am going to write to all the journalist contacts and say, “This is what happened, it’s been logged, and in the future if you want to do a story on this, I have something to say. You can look me up.”
That’s it. One more story filed and logged.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 