Party and State: Bloomberg Accused of Killing China Report

Monday, November 11, 2013

Bloomberg Accused of Killing China Report

Making money in China ultimately means that at some point, you're going to have to kiss some serious ass. If you're a news site you really have to knuckle under. Get down on all fours and seriously lick boot. The CCP are in charge around here, and they're used to getting all their own way. Putting the frighteners on the foreign reporting community by administering a few sound beatings (back in the good old days) has given way to denied visa applications and the occasional website block as a surefire way of making sure that hacks think twice before following up a lead.

China rattles it's visa sabre just to remind all the foreign devils who write nasty stories about all those Mao-fearing politicians. If you really piss someone off, your website gets blocked. Pavlovian system of punishment and reward has meant that ISPs and websites do a lot of self-censorship to keep the Politburo happy. Occasionally bulletins from the Ministry remind journos who exactly is in charge, but by and large, the censorship machine hums along quite nicely all by itself.

The problem is getting foreigners on board. Foreign journalists have all sorts of righteous beliefs concerning the freedom of the press and serving the public interest, and other related nonsensica. The New York Times and Bloomberg have paid the price for publishing non too flattering pieces about the upper echelons of Chinese government.

In an effort to get it's groove back in China, and prevent it's Beijing bureau from being forced to close, accusations have surfaced that senior editors at Bloomberg quashed a story that linked Wang Jianlin with the relatives of top government officials in Beijing. Bloomberg have flat out denied that the story was dropped because of it's already precarious position in China. Editor-in-Chief Matthew Winkler was adamant that there was no threat from the Chinese government that they would kick Bloomberg out of China if they ran the piece.

“The reporting as presented to me was not ready for publication,” Mr Winkler told the Financial Times, adding that Laurie Hays, a senior editor, and other top editors agreed with that assessment.

The person familiar with the discussions dismissed Bloomberg’s comments that the story was not ready for publication, saying it had been approved and just needed a Chinese government response. “We had crossed the Rubicon,” the person said. “The story was fully edited, fact checked and vetted by the lawyers.”

Kowtowing through gritted teeth has become par for the course in Hollywood, who are more that happy to insert a couple of ingratiating yet completely irrelevant pro-China scenes in their movies. If the allegations are true that the Bloomberg killed a report purely based purely on speculation that the Chinese wouldn't like it, they may as well just shut up shop anyway.