The Incestuous Relationship Between Chinese Media and Government

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The Incestuous Relationship between Chinese Media and Government Since the founding of China in 1949, almost all television, newspaper, radio, and internet media has been government run. In a country where the largest media organizations are agencies of the state, information is channeled through the government and modified or terminated before it reaches the general public. In other words, media has become synonymous with propaganda. Reporters without Borders, a non-governmental French-based organization, has called the Chinese government “the [leaders] of the world in repression of the internet (World Report).” Among the many taboos of Chinese culture, government computers censor sites and documents including words and phrases such as the American word “freedom”, Tiananmen Square, anything challenging the communist party, policies of Tibet, and the underground spiritual group Falun Gong. The history of stringent media oversight was relaxed in the 1980’s under the rule of Deng Xiaoping, but since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, oppression has continued to dominate Chinese media freedom. To maintain the homogenous nature of Chinese culture, the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP) and State Administration of Radio, Television, and Film (SARTF) are working as hard as ever to blur or erase any information that address current political and social climates worldwide as well as discussions involving Chinese social issues. Unfortunately for these organizations, they are now expected to fund themselves through advertisement and are not being as heavily subsidized as they were in the 1980’s and 90’s. Because of this and rising new forms of communication such as text messaging, the mediain China has become harder to control. This has resulted in diversification and increased influence of international publications as well as a change in the

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