Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen waving the piece of paper upon which Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology Li Yizhong promises only to persecute dissidents "a little."
As tough as I am on them, I have to admit that the Seattle Times editorial board is usually pretty good on issues involving free speech. Unless, of course, it’s spoken in Mandarin.
GOOGLE’S fight with China presents issues that are not as simple as many Americans believe.
Americans frame it as a fight against state censorship — of government telling a U.S. company to disable its search engine in China so that Google’s customers there can’t read certain political opinions. Americans don’t believe in doing that — and Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has said so publicly, threatening to leave China.
To China’s government, the issue is whether a foreign corporation will obey its laws. Framed that way, the answer is easy. It has to obey. That is the rule with foreign companies everywhere.
Well, the law is the law. Spoken like a Mahatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King Jr… you know, if they were drunk.
And on what does the Times base this bold statement of principle? Well apparently they looked the communist Chinese minister of industry and information in the eye and were able to get a sense of his soul. After all…
Listen to what they say.
“I hope Google will abide by Chinese laws and regulations,” says Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology. This is not the diction of a totalitarian state. It sounds like a man who wants to make a deal.
Now that’s the sorta confident assessment of a foreign government’s character and intentions that would make Neville Chamberlain proud. I mean, with totally non-totalitarian diction like that, where’s the harm in a little censorship?
I dunno, but is anybody else a little weirded out by an American newspaper defending government censorship, while urging the world’s largest Internet search engine to just quietly play along? Strange.
The Times editors keep getting weirder and weirder.
Intellectual honesty is an unknown commodity at the Seattle Times.
Ya’ sure, but the People’s Republic sells us lots of cheap stuff so we can maintain our weirdly distorted high standard of living and buys our Treasury Bills.
Money talks. Bullshit walks.
Not confusing at all. We’re talking about gubmint censorship of the Internet, which Uncle Frank rightly perceives as having something to do with his paper circling the drain. (Mind you, he hasn’t grasped the notion that his own management has more to do with it.) The “traditional” media have been badmouthing online-anything for ages–it’s full of smut, molesters and hackers, dontcha know?. Of course, at the same time they hope y’all will go look at their own Web sites and patronize their advertisers.
I’m concerned about the precedent this sets of totalitarian editorial boards dictating business decisions to private companies. It seems like a blatant interference with the free exercise of private property rights.
Is Frank Blethen subletting space on his editorial page to foreign governments to raise money for his ailing newspaper? There is, after all, a lot of vacant space in his editorial page. Just wondering …
@4 A new survey shows 4 out of 5 readers of online news never click on ads.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.c.....fnews.html
C’mon Goldy, at least be honest.
‘As tough as I am on them….’
Equals still very jealous and angry they wouldn’t hire him. I think Roger Rodent’s O.C.D. is rubbing off on you. Give it a rest Goldy, this is becoming really pathetic, even for you. Good luck!
re 8: C,mon, Mark1, at least ,fess up to the fact that the only reason you try to yank Goldy’s chain is because he refuses to let you post your garbage as serious commentary.
@9 Mark1’s posts are a compost bin.
The Times folks should move to Idaho, they’d fit right in.
BOISE — Idaho lawmakers are backing a plan that would allow state tax bills to be paid down with silver medallions instead of cash.
http://www.spokesman.com/stori.....id-silver/
@7 Well how many ads did you read in the newspaper back in the day? I still read the papers when I visit my parents and I barely notice the ads (except Fry’s and car ads).
I’m sure the teabaggers are all over this one. You know how they are about government interference.
Hey, when are they going to denounce standardized time zones as big government socialism? Communally funded and built roads and bridges? Let’s dismantle the TVA. Freedom!!!
Can I pay my taxes with chickens?
New Headline:
Seattle Times supports and excuses government censorship.
The Blethen rag has sunk to new lows. Google is finally acting responsibly and all blethen can say is they should follow the Chinese laws that promote and encourage censorship in the extreme?
I guess the first amendment only matters if it affects the Blethen rag in some way….what freakin’ hypocrites.
@12 Somebody must have read them because real estate ads, car ads, and classified ads kept newspapers in business for 100 years.
@ 9 and 10:
I dunno, Mark seems to have hit the nail on the head and he didn’t appear to state anything that was not true whether you assholes like it or not. As an infrequent user of this ignorant cesspool of a site, I must say I’m surprised that the crusty old Wabbit hasn’t keeled over of a massive stroke in a thick cloud of cigarette smoke yet. What is it they say?…. Oh yeah, only the good die young. LOL. It is fun to come here for a laugh every so often, and to see you ignorant douche bags whine and flail around in your own feces. Good luck Libtards! :)
For a hearty chuckle:
http://www.urbandictionary.com.....rm=libtard
Blethen & Co. have three problems with the internet: (a) it dilutes their power to tell people how to think; (b) it gives them access to alternate sources of the news, thereby (see item a, above); and (c) it cuts into their revenue stream by providing alternate sources to the news.
More importantly to the Blethen’s finances, they have discovered to their dismay that online advertising doesn’t bring in the bucks that printed advertising does. Why? Well, one reason is that THE PRINTED ADVERTISING WAS NOWHERE NEAR AS VALUABLE AS NEWSPAPERS LED THEIR ADVERTISERS TO BELIEVE. They would routinely sell ads based upon # of subscribers, and convince advertisors that a good majority of readers would notice, read, and act upon the ad.
Of course, they were aided and abetted in this by the advertising agencies, who were usually paid a percentage of a company’s advertising budget (as well as considerable kickbacks from the publishers to whom the agencies steered their client’s advertising). They also talked up the power of increasingly large advetising budgets, and talked down the internet.
The problem for them, however, is that the internet makes it very easy to track results. You can track by page views, click-throughs, and all the way to orders placed. The company knows exactly how effective it’s advertising is over the internet.
Dead-tree publishers, in contrast, want you to believe that every subscriber reads the newspaper or magazine from cover to cover, pondering over each ad, and eventually make a buying decision based upon that ad. Whe it doesn’t happen right away, they just pass it off as “image advertising”, meaning that it will help the advertisor in the long run – at least long enough fdr the advertisor to forget his concerns at the time.
So I would argue that the value of internet advertising is pretty much consistent with the value of all print advertising. It’s just that the printed advertising has been long overpriced in comparison with the results it achieves.
Funny, though – the internet-only version of the P.I. is getting close to breaking even on it’s considerably diminished budget.
I’m not surprised that Blethen & Co. want Google to go away. As far as they are concerned, they want to return to 1990 as rapidly as possible.
The buggy-whip makers are advocating a similar sort of time-travel.
The Times is a homer and thinks that bashing Google will help Microsoft. Frank Blethen would fellate Bill Gates every day and twice on Sundays if he could. But Frank does have class; he’ll give Ballmer only a hand-job.
@19 “they want to return to 1990 as rapidly as possible”
Is this a typo? Shouldn’t this read “1890”?
Bill Kristol was right back in 1992, and it is true today:
Health care reform WILL re-legitimize middle-class dependence for security on government spending and regulation, and WILL revive the Democrats as the generous protectors of middle-class interests.
Eat shit, GOP. We’re your political worst nightmare.