
Bloomberg News Is Said to Curb Articles That Might Anger China - weu
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/09/world/asia/bloomberg-news-is-said-to-curb-articles-that-might-anger-china.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesworld&_r=0
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r0h1n
This isn't "the west" cowing down before China, but a private, profit-seeking
news organization deciding on a more pragmatic (albeit cowardly) option after
what must have been a big cost-benefit analysis.

Sadly, this is the future of news. No news organization can today afford to
antagonize one of its largest (potential) markets simply to strive for some
higher journalistic zeal.

Take Google for instance. Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground
against the Chinese government and squandered the entire country away to
competitors? Whatever halo they earned when they made that decision has long
vanished.

Edit: Morals and halos don't pay journalist salaries.

~~~
davidjgraph
"Does anyone today care that Google stood its ground against the Chinese
government and squandered the entire country away to competitors?"

Yes, me. It's the single factual act of Google's history that sticks in my
mind. It says to me someone near the top will lose revenue to make an ethical
stand. I can't remember too many other concrete examples of this in large
companies.

~~~
chrischen
Google didn't stand its ground. Google also did a cost-benefit analysis and
realized that China wasn't going to let a foreign company control its internet
and monitor its data, which in turn was monitored by the US government.
Further cost-benefit analysis by Google determined that it was more beneficial
to tell everyone it was for principles.

~~~
turing
That may very well be true, but stating it as fact just decreases your
credibility.

~~~
chrischen
This is what Google employees from China have told me. I'm stating it as fact
because from my perspective, with the information I have, it has appeared as
almost fact to me.

------
pavs
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything
else is public relations." \- George Orwell

This might not be a popular opinion, but I honestly think that its not
possible for a for profit news organization to be fair and balanced. Specially
in todays world when news organizations are owned and operated by a few to
drive public opinion.

Ideally news organization should either be donation funded and non-profit.
When you start caring about maximizing page-views and start pushing for more
profit per pixels, its stops being journalism.

~~~
tete
Yes and no.

You can consider buying a newspaper a donation.

Actually what you suggest already has been tried in various forms, the outcome
being stuff like indymedia, but also others. The problem you face here is that
having no ads in your news usually means having no money for:

marketing, getting out your stuff. A lot of things are already know anyway
somewhere, just that person isn't loud enough or nobody cares.

lawyers, if you don't want to do just public relations then you will need lots
of them.

reportages, that often require a lot of preparation, going to other countries,
hidden cameras, tons of other equipment, etc.

fallback money in case something goes really bad.

It's sad, but it feels a bit like if there were enough donating people for
serious news then the world would already be better and require it way less.

Also you saw the Wikileaks drama. I can be kinda rough.

------
veidr
Somewhat ironically, I am in China today, and therefore I can't access the
linked article. (Without doing a bunch of convoluted VPN fuckery, I mean.)

But I don't have to read it to know that profit-seeking corporations often
kowtow to the various forces that could negatively affect that profit.

Bloomberg has a thing with the totalitarian Chinese regime. The New York Times
does favors for the Obama administration. Probably both of them do a lot of
bootlicking for their advertisers.

That's why free society needs numerous media outlets, and the legal freedom to
report the truth. Because there isn't any obligation for them to report _all_
of the truth, and there isn't any feasible way to force them to do so anyhow.

But at least when we have a bunch of them, the pot will call the kettle black,
and remind us how they work.

~~~
foobarqux
Tor with hidden bridges and obsfproxy still works last I heard.

------
confluence
One of my life rules is that: Everyone is a whore.

So before you listen to what anyone says about anything, check to see who pays
the bills. I've found it to be a highly effective filtering strategy.

~~~
funkyfreak
So you work for Atlassian?

~~~
confluence
Trader.

~~~
funkyfreak
Do you have any thoughts on a Bitcoin options market?

~~~
confluence
Sorry, I have nothing in bitcoin.

~~~
phyalow
Thats a shame.

------
credo
It is ironic that the editor should compare China to Nazi-era Germany and then
go on to suggest that self-censorship is the best way to cover news in China.

On one hand, some courageous Chinese men and women risk everything for freedom
and fight their government. On the other hand, it is sad to see these rich
American businessmen _collaborate_ with the Chinese autocrats (even though
these American businessmen don't need to fear torture etc and the only risk
they run is losing some extra money by not being to conduct business in China)

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tete
You do realize this is common and goes into both directions?

The same has in lets say Europe, where news don't dare to talk badly about the
US or Russia. It's a really common thing. Nobody wants to be the reason for
diplomatic troubles and everyone knows how childish all over the planet _can_
act

Sometimes causing that trouble simply doesn't seem worthwhile (even though one
really should say that it would their job), maybe also because a lot of them
is pretty clear and not surprising in first place. In a world where society
wants to be passive (and yeah, even if the startup folks like to exclude
themselves we always need point at examples that aren't really part of the
startup culture) the motivation to criticize another, economically important
country or even your own country isn't exactly high. Sure people might agree
and say that they not like it, but changes of policies are pretty much non-
existent.

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pseingatl
You mean, just like the New York Times holds back articles that might offend
the Administration; or when the Administration asks them to?

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alan_cx
So....

Like when people here on HN decide not to criticise, say, Tesla, Musk, Linux,
open source, etc because they know they will get voted down?

Or where politicians don't properly investigate or voice issues with the likes
of the NSA because they simply don't know what dirt they have on them?

Or don't criticise presidents who start wars on lies because they are called
unpatriotic or anti American?

No. I don't like it one little bit either. But frankly, people with something
to lose are rank cowards. People taking the "coin", worse.

------
AJ007
In the past I have found Bloomberg has published exceptionally high quality
journalism pieces, specifically those published in their magazine Bloomberg
Markets. This year I have become worried by the internal news-terminal spying
scandal and increasingly political opinion pieces they publish. The
alternative, WSJ, is overall fairly lacking (though credit to some really good
investigative work over there too.)

Bloomberg News is in an interesting position that other news companies would
never get in to. In the article it mentions Bloomberg is already having
trouble in China due to previous articles they wrote and "sales of its
financial terminals to state enterprises have slowed." Bloomberg has a near
monopoly status on this aggregated financial information. If a company, public
or private, chooses not to buy them they are put at a competitive disadvantage
(assuming its not being used to spy on them; as private citizens we face this
same challenge with some of the online services we use.)

------
dude3
Drudgereport.com, generally a hawkish site, is accessible in China, Nytimes is
not. In fact, no conservative websites are blocked.

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cinquemb
My my, looks like the pot calling the kettle black...

So NYT, I'm supposed to choose 'morally' between two governments which neither
give a fuck about me and from _you_ telling us so? That's amusing.

------
tn13
Nothing surprising. China has too much of financial muscle.

------
LekkoscPiwa
This is the fundamental problem that the West has: we don't have jacobins. We
don't have political and intellectual elites that aren't cynical about our own
values. It is not like we will punish some extreme Muslim treating his wife
like a slave with a jail time. We will just be politically correct and say
that's his culture. Liberalism doesn't go well with radicalism for some
reason. Radical Liberals like Robespierre, Danton are needed. People who
believe in our Western values enough to die in their name. If we are cynical
about ourselves how on Earth can we compete with people who commit suicide
because they believe in their values more than their life. That's something we
really need. We give up our values for nothing. Who cares about China? Our
value is freedom of speech and people who don't believe in freedom of speech
were guillotined in Revolutionary France. I wish we could have elites today
that would be as serious about freedom, liberalism and capitalism as French
Revolutionaries were. I hope I will live to see it. Just tired of the apathy
in the US. Wake up!

~~~
csallen
_> Our value is freedom of speech and people who don't believe in freedom of
speech were guillotined in Revolutionary France._

Oh irony of ironies.

That type of thing is exactly _why_ I'm glad there's a dearth of such extreme
political fanaticism. In the end, a democracy will only be as intelligent as
its people are educated, and even the educated can fall prey to the madness of
the masses. Demagogues take control, and soon enough you have actors
blacklisted as Commies, mosques being attacked, free speech "advocates"
murdering dissenters, and -- maybe -- Chinese nationals being rounded up in
the streets.

No thank you.

~~~
LekkoscPiwa
Radicalism isn't always a bad thing. The problem with the current Western
civilization is that we traded radicalism for cynism and liberty for safety.
This has nothing to do with education. Goring was very well educated. Most of
the population in any country of the world will turn into angry blood thirsty
mob - as soon as you leave them without choice. Look at Golden Dawn and
Greece. It's not like Greeks becamse angry blood thirsty mob overnight. It was
a process of radicalisation in the wrong direction. And if good people in
Greece won't wake up and stand up radically for the liberal values the Greece
will be lost. And this will be precisely because Greek elites that represent
Liberal way of thinking are cynical about their own values. They don't look
like they believe in them. They don't look like they believe in anything. And
that's not a political class that you will vote for in a crisis. For the
crisis you need someone with a balls and vision, not someone mumbling about
political correctness and gay rights.

Radicalism is like a knife. In bad hands or minds it will surely do more harm
than good, but giving up on it altogether isn't wise. Especially when you are
a good guy and refuse to be radical in your efforts to spread good.

------
alexeisadeski3
This is a major reason to support NewsCorp, even for those of you whom are
liberal Fox-haters. Murdoch has made no secret of his desire to stay as
independent as possible this charade, and has made quite clear that he will
avoid the Chinese market if that's what it takes.

~~~
credo
_> >Murdoch has made no secret of his desire to stay as independent as
possible this charade, and has made quite clear that he will avoid the Chinese
market if that's what it takes_

At best, your comment is a naive and ignorant take on Murdoch and China.

See
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/world/asia/26murdoch.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/26/world/asia/26murdoch.html?pagewanted=all)
for how Murdoch wooed Chinese leaders, how his Star TV man tried to stop the
BBC from showing a Tiannamen Square video and how they ultimately dropped the
BBC from Star TV's Chinese programming.

~~~
alexeisadeski3
Huh. I didn't know that Murdoch had anything in mainland China, thought that
he'd avoided it with all of his properties. Thank you for informing me. :)

