New restrictions announced by the Chinese government will more closely supervise all online news sources.
Unhealthy news is bad news to the Chinese government, and they will crack down on those who make it available online, the Xinhua news agency reports. Beijing has announced its intent to regulate sites, and shutdown ones that contain “fabricated information, pornography, gambling or violence.”
“We need to better regulate the online news services with the emergence of so many unhealthy news stories that will easily mislead the public,” said a government spokesman at a press conference in Beijing.
Government agencies may not give stories to online news outlets without approval. The regulations seem mostly directed at sites that publish stories outside of ones they create. News organizations carrying news from other outlets along with their own must apply for approval from the State Council Information Office, Xinhua reported.
Distribution of news beyond the web browser will be affected by the new regulation, which the government updated because “it has lagged far behind the development of online news services, in technology, content and form.” Bulletin board systems, and news that gets distributed by means like SMS, fall under the regulation’s purview too.
US firms have been battling over the opportunity to serve the 100 million-user Chinese market. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo have all come under criticism for providing varying levels of content censorship in exchange for a presence in China. Yahoo has been under considerable criticism in recent days for its cooperation with the Chinese government.
Reporters Without Borders disclosed how verdict documents showed Yahoo’s role in providing authorities with information leading to the ten-year sentence handed down to a journalist for sending an email that the government called a ‘state secret’. Yahoo has said it has to comply with the laws where it operates, and had no choice but to turn over evidence to investigators.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
