The “falling for satire” bit is our little extrapolation, but what other funny way to explain this? Via SCMP:
“All kinds of media work units may not use any unauthorised news products provided by foreign media or foreign websites,” according to a notice issued by the General Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
This came on the heels of David Barboza winning a Pulitzer for his Wen Jiabao reporting.
The notice also does not allow any reporting from reporting any information from “informers, freelancers, NGOs, commercial organisations” without “prior verification.”
Huh.
So here’s the thing. What I would like to believe is that GAPPRFT (god, is that what we’re gonna call it these days? Why not just pfffffart) is doing this to encourage domestic journalists to get out there and ask the tough questions for themselves, to be more like field reporters rather than tumblrs.
Unfortunately, I know Chinese media better than that. More likely, pfffffart is sick of seeing its subsidiaries (in a manner of speaking) get embarrassed. Shall we recount?
- CCTV Falls For Virgin Atlantic’s April Fools Joke
- Chinese State Media’s People’s Daily Reports Kim Jong-Un Was Named “The Onion’s Sexiest Man Alive”
- U.S. satire tricks Beijing paper
Heck, we can probably call this new regulation the “21st Century Business Herald rule”:
- Which Leading Chinese Business Paper Just Got Hoaxed By Paul Krugman Bankruptcy Satire?
- Chinese Weekly Falls For Another Spoof, This One Claiming Kim Jong-un’s Missile Launch Was Delayed By Windows Glitch
Alas, amusing as it would be, the real reason, of course, is for control. Via the Telegraph:
David Bandurski, the editor of Hong Kong University’s China Media Project, said such rules were part of ongoing attempts to “control press content at its source” and prevent inconvenient stories from the foreign media entering the Chinese news stream.
pfffffart!
New regulations in China ban journalists from quoting foreign media (SCMP)
To be honest it never surprises me because English satire is a little difficult for ESL students to grasp and I very much doubt *everyone’s* english reading and writing capabilities and ability to understand tongue-and-cheek unless otherwise proven.
Your comment is reasonable and fair.
Hurry everyone and insult her intelligence!
This sounds scary, but if it’s reported accurately then this will probably be yet another directive that is barely followed at all. Unless they basically decide that everything is implicitly authorized until it’s not, this regulation would, as written, seem to require the Global Times, for instance, to completely gut its website. We all know that past campaigns against things like “vulgar content” have done nothing to raise the tone of the Chinese media, so I don’t think that this amounts to much more than a demand for editors to be extra-strict on undesirable foreign reporting. This obviously isn’t a good thing, but I don’t see how they could actually expect to do what they seem to be saying.