Olympics: English-language media resources

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the government is taking an aggressive stance on covering news–to grab control of a story before others break it–especially when it involves “difficult” events such as the attacks in Xinjiang province. 

At dinner Sunday night some friends were talking about China’s media policy, and non-Chinese language resources. Madeline Earp and, for the duration of the Games, Kristin Jones are CPJ’s Chinese speakers and resources. Here are two interesting posts to read if you’re interested in knowing more. One is Jonathan Ansfield’s on Newsweek‘s blog , Even the Propaganda Dept wants records broken. Another is David Bandurski’s Propaganda leaders scurry off to carry out the “spirit” of Hu Jintao’s “important” media speech. I’ve mentioned David before. He works at Hong Kong University‘s China Media Project. Both David and Jonathan are fluent in Chinese, and are very good resources in explaining the government’s approach to media control.

Other valuable resources are aggregator and commentator Roland Soong’s  EastSouthWestNorth. Also helpful is Danwei (an old socialist term meaning “work unit” or workplace, though for Danwei it’s purely retro … ), which takes a broad view on China’s media and communications industry.

(Reporting from Hong Kong)