Press Authority to "train" Journalists

Sounding the death knell on investigative journalism in the country as it intends to provide "training" on journalistic best practices.

Lasting for three months until the end of 2013, the program will be provided for free (yay!) and beleaguered hacks at state owned news outlets will be expected to take an exam to get a press pass valid for 2014.  As you would expect from such a program, topics included are "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and "The Marxist View on Journalism", with things like journalism ethics and accuracy and all that other less important stuff at the bottom of the list.

At the end of August, the Poltiburo ordered all journalists to attend classes on Marxism in an effort to remind journos that they're employed to provide positive advertising for the CCP, and not allowed to go around investigating stuff and then reporting it without permission.

The program echoes the Seven Baselines for a Clean Internet, which also placed political interests above any of that bothersome fact-checking.  Conversely enough, the idea of improving journalistic standards so that we don't get anymore stories about fake vaginas, or porn being passed off as news, or pictures of spaceships from Battlestar Galactica fansites, or articles from The Onion being reprinted verbatim as news, or satirical pieces from The New Yorker being plagarised as news (that's enough. Ed.) hasn't crossed anyone's mind

Did Xi Jin Ping Recieve "Help" At University?

An interesting report on The Australian a couple of days ago says that Xi Jin Ping may have cheated been "helped" while he was writing his final dissertation.  Also, the actual content didn't have that much to do with the actual degree that he was studying for.  While Xi was allegedlystudying for his law degree, the thesis he submitted was entitled "A Tentative Study on China's Rural Marketisation".

In the text, Mr Xi thanks three academics and a researcher "for giving me great help while I was writing the paper". It cites as sources 97 books in Chinese and 26 in English. Mr Xi's official biography says the degree was granted through an "on the job" programme in Marxist theory and ideological education for work done between 1998 and 2002.

Given the huge amount of cheating helping that goes on during the insanity that is gaokao week, it's probably not much of a surprise that the leader of this great nation (China, in case you're wondering) did a bit of cut and pasting from Wikipedia in his younger days too.

Xi was not alone in having trouble fitting in his studies, since he was also working at the governor of Fujian, and earning pocket money as deputy leader of the province's Communist party.  It a wonder that he found time to attended lectures at all...

Literary scholars found several areas in the 161-page dissertation that would raise academic eyebrows - among them what seemed a lack of original research by Mr Xi.

They said it appeared to combine extracts from government reports with translations from foreign works in a leaden Marxist style, suggesting it was drafted by a group and finalised by the author.

Well, that's what communism is, right?