When China won the Olympic games, one of the things it agreed to do was a bit unusual -- it promised not to censor media reporting on anything related to the games, and to allow uncensored Internet access within the Olympic village before and during the games. It's already broken these promises several times, the most recent incident taking place on Friday. Apparently thousands of people were waiting in line to purchase tickets and a fist-fight broke out around 4am. Hours later, in daylight after the incident was over, reporters were turned away from people standing in line whom they wanted to interview.
Security was ramped up today, and reporters were denied access to people in the lines by military police guards. Hong Kong television showed journalists being shoved by security officers as they tried to film, less than a mile from the main Bird's Nest Olympic stadium.
``A reporter was trying to go into a restricted area, refused to comply with orders and was brought away by police,'' said Sun Weide, the chief spokesman for the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee. ``The police were trying to maintain order and we hope that journalists can comply with our rules.''
Beijing organizers have pledged to give reporters the same freedoms as at previous Olympics. Beijing police didn't respond to a fax inquiring about the trouble last night and the security policy today.
Bloomberg story here.
The Wall Street Journal reports that some journalists were arrested and others were required to destroy footage. It goes on to talk about how this news is being censored within the media centers of the Olympic village.
Meanwhile, the government continues to block news Web sites such as the BBC's Mandarin site and the Chinese-language, pro-democratic Apple Daily of Hong Kong. That is happening inside Olympic media centers, despite the promise of China's Olympic organizers that Internet access would be unfettered. It was always unlikely that China's media cops would be willing to suspend their censorship habits for the Olympics, and Friday's overreaction to one unfortunate incident will harm China's image far more than any reporting would have.
I could find only those two stories about the incident through Google News, though granted it's not a huge incident.
Others attending at the Olympics are also reporting censorship unrelated to this event. Amnesty International's web site is blocked, for example, according to various blogs.
I'm thinking that now that the games are about to begin, there's little the International Olympic Committee can do -- they can hardly pull the games at this late hour, and doing so would likely be seen by most (including me) as an overreaction.
I think what should happen is that the media needs to wake up and shine a VERY bright spotlight on this issue, instead of the dim and half-noticed one they're kinda/sorta/thinking-about shining on it now.
Matt Harding is a video game designer, but he's mostly known for his "Dancing Matt" videos. This is the 2008 version, which came out about a month ago. YouTube founder Jawed Karim called the original version his favorite video posted to YouTube. I just think it's cool.
I'm having trouble getting this one working. If it doesn't show, just follow this link.