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Chinese Diplomats Pressure Canada’s CBC, Television Program Pulled
By Paul Midler | November 8, 2007
Forget about this business with the Dalai Lama and what his appearance in China was supposed to say about Canadian resolve - the Chinese embassy in Canada has just succeeded in getting the Canadian Broadcast Company to stop the CBC from airing a program on Falun Gong.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about Falun Gong - for so many reasons. But what is interesting is watching Chinese diplomats succeed at manipulating the media in foreign countries. The way it went down, the embassy explained to the CBC, naturally, that they were merely worried about factual errors. The director of the program, Beyond the Red Wall, was notified only at the last moment that the program wouldn’t air, and that they would all be discussing edits. The director’s response:
“It’s rather surprising, because the film has been in production for about three years and was delivered to the CBC in March, so the authorities and the executives at the CBC signed off on the film quite some time ago.”
Another media company, Yahoo, has had its own recent experience with the Chinese government. The online portal aided the Chinese government by turning over information on dissident, Shi Tao. The company has apologized to U.S. Congress over the matter. Yahoo shares took an apparent beating as a result of the backpedaling. Western media companies need to give serious thought to their corporate policies regarding China.
Topics: China |
November 8th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Just saw the New York Times picked up the story…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/09/business/worldbusiness/09broadcast.html?_r=1&ref=media&oref=slogin
November 9th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Blame Canada,
Blame Canada,
Cuz it’s not a real country anyway…
November 9th, 2007 at 3:31 am
The documentary got pulled due to inaccuracies:
- Falun Gong passes off “gory” medical artifacts and misrepresent them as evidence of torture. For example here they used a photo of breast cancer to fake a “sexual torture” claim:
http://rambodoc.wordpress.com/2007/09/17/is-the-falun-gong-going-wrong/
- The “organ harvesting” allegation David Kilgour is promoting has been discredited by multiple undercover investigations.
Here’re findings from US State Deparment and Chinese dissident Harry Wu:
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=April&x=20060416141157uhyggep0.5443231&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html
http://www.usembassy.it/pdf/other/RL33437.pdf (section CRS-7)
http://www.cicus.org/info_eng/artshow.asp?ID=6491
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060806_1.htm
November 9th, 2007 at 8:13 am
CL - Thanks for the links, may be of interest to some.
November 12th, 2007 at 5:48 am
[…] Diplomats Pressure the CBC Jump to Comments According the China Game, the CBC canceled a documentary on the Falun Gong last night, because it received pressure from the […]
November 12th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
To Hunxuer:where exactly are you from that you can voice such a pompous comment?It is shallow small mindedness thinking that is going to bring this civilization to its knees.You are a flea in the minds of free positive thinkers!
November 12th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
Personal oppinion on China.Within the next 10 years China will implode due to its uncontrollable desire for power and lack of respect to the enviroment and other countries private matters.Chine is constantly crying foul if any other country talks about China’s human rights issues-bad quality of products shipped oversea’s-I.P.Rights,the gov. of China says they are trying to fix these things in hopes of attracting people to the doomed Olympics,it will fail and that will be the start of something??But it is well known that Chinese consider deception as a virtue-Huh.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:33 pm
Gross generalization, steven jones, and what are you criticizing from hunxuer. He said “blame canada”