International Olympic Committee (IOC) officials have cut a deal with China to allow the blocking of sensitive Web sites from media during the Beijing Games, press chief Kevan Gosper said yesterday.
Gosper, chairman of the IOC’s press commission, had previously said that Internet access for the 21,500 media accredited for the Games would be “open.”
“I ... now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related,” the Australian said.
“It has been my belief, and I have expressed it consistently, that the international media would enjoy free and open access to the Internet at Games time for reporting the Olympic Games and that censorship would not be an issue,” Gosper said.
“I regret that it now appears BOCOG [Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games] has announced that there will be limitations on Web site access during Games time and, while I understand that sensitive material not related to the Olympic Games continues to be a matter for the Chinese, I believe BOCOG and the IOC should have conveyed a clear message to the international media, in so far as this affects Internet access, at an earlier stage,” he said.
Beijing organizers said censorship would not stop journalists doing their jobs in reporting the Games.
“We are going to do our best to facilitate the foreign media to do their reporting work through the Internet,” BOCOG spokesman Sun Weide (孫維德) told a news conference.
However, Sun said China’s pledge was only to allow foreign reporters enough information to carry out their duties to cover the Games, not to have unfettered Internet access.
“Our promise was that journalists would be able to use the Internet for their work during the Olympic Games,” he said. “So we have given them sufficient access to do that.”
Liu Binjie (柳斌杰), the head of China’s Ministry of Press and Publications, told Xinhua new agency yesterday that critics defamed China “with stereotypes constructed from hearsay and prejudice in their mind, regardless of the reality.”
He also said new media regulations were being drawn up to replace those issued for the Olympics, which will expire in October.
“China’s open door to the foreign media will not close after the Games,” Liu said.
Press freedom advocates Reporters Without Borders, however, described the reversal of the press freedom pledge as a humiliation for IOC president Jacques Rogge.
“When China applied to host the Games they promised total press freedom and that must include Internet access,” said Vincent Brossel, the group’s Asia Director.
“What a total humiliation this is for Jacques Rogge. How can the IOC be so weak and feeble,” Brossel said.
Web sites that deal with subjects deemed too sensitive by China were blocked at the Olympic media center yesterday, prompting the message: “Impossible to display the page.” These included sites dealing the the Falun Gong as well as US and European broadcasters.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC) of Hong Kong yesterday criticized China’s treatment of reporters at the chaotic final sale of Olympic tickets on Friday, calling it “wholly unacceptable.”
The FCC, in a letter to China’s foreign ministry office in Hong Kong, called on Beijing to issue stricter guidelines to police and security forces on how to deal with journalists, after a photographer was manhandled and detained.
Felix Wong, a photojournalist for the South China Morning Post, was detained for several hours on Friday by Beijing police for “not following control measures” during the ticket sale. Other journalists trying to cover the scramble of some 40,000 Olympic ticket buyers for last-minute tickets said they were injured by officers at the scene.
Also See: Bush shares human rights worries with Chinese dissidents
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS