Can you 'report freely' on Olympics with Net restrictions?

The International Olympic Committee has acknowledged that it acceded to Chinese government demands that some Internet censorship be kept in place during the Olympics, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Nevermind that IOC promised journalists could "report freely" from the games. Still, is this really a problem for reporters?

Long story short: this isn't much of a problem. Journalists arriving in Beijing without regularly being stationed there have already spent however much money to get to China and stay in hotels. They can afford a VPN service, which will completely circumvent the government restrictions--that is, if their newsroom doesn't have one already. Journalists will just have to learn how to use the Internet under less-than-ideal circumstances.

The long story: for the unaccustomed, the restrictions will be a pain in the neck. Certain things will be blocked in certain places. You'll never know exactly why something was stopped. Not-so-savvy reporters or those with old computers may have trouble using proxies and VPN.

But this doesn't really stop reporters from "reporting freely."

What would stop that is denial of access, denial of free travel, and threats or actual detainment or deportation after publishing something the government doesn't like.

I can say from personal experience that certain towns in the northwestern province of Xinjiang were being treated as off-limits to foreigners and some Chinese from out of town as recently as 10 days ago. We've already seen Beijing police acting violently against reporters from Hong Kong and breaking camera equipment at an Olympics news event.

Reporting freedom will not be complete in Beijing, but Internet censorship is not the reason. When foreign journalists are the target of restrictions, that's not much of a civil liberties problem for Chinese people, who face a restricted internet whether or not a bunch of reporters get a free pass this summer.

Perhaps reporters should get over their own selves and write more about Chinese people.

UPDATE July 31, 2008 17:23 GMT: The AP reports that an official who guaranteed free access to journalists was surprised by the shift:

Gosper said he first learned of China's backtracking on Internet access when Beijing organizing committee spokesman Sun Weide announced Tuesday that journalists would have only "sufficient" -- not unrestricted -- access to the Internet.

Since then, Gosper said he has felt "a bit isolated" within the IOC and was surprised at being left out of the loop.

[ikramerica--2008]

Wow, you really are a Chicom apologist. Every time you post in your blog, you make excuses for their actions, or find a way to "blame the victim." It's laughable. But this often happens to Ex-pats. They become so enamored with their host nation, they forget the freedoms they left behind. It's sad really.

But I guess you are right. It is the fault of the reporters for not wanting to be censored. And it's the fault of the world for expecting China to live up to it's promises, the ones it made when it was granted the Olympics, the ones it is breaking with no recourse from the IOC or the world. Oh well?

[craiggorsuch]

I agree with ikramerica's comments... Repression is OK as long as we don't have to personally experience it. The Chinese Government doesn't allow it's own people unfettered access to the Internet (and the information contained therein), but since the Chinese Government offers a "free pass" via VPN to foreign journalists, no one says "Boo".

Your own admissions of those that aren't familiar with China's clamp down on the net will become accustomed to is a tacit approval of their tactics against their own population.

What happened to journalistic integrity and forcing light into dark places, by being the obnoxious thorn in the side of those your are investigating? I suppose it's because you're not there to investigate China's totalitarian machinations against their own population.

Communism never bothers communists because they never have to experience it.

[gwbstr]

Folks, let's be reasonable. Here I am arguing that journalists should stop complaining about their own plight and focus on the locals, and you two want me to... well, focus on the locals. Read more carefully.

[pdx3d]

I traveled to Beijing in May, and I was blocked to access my bank account in USA over the browser, which was probably done by us banks. Regardless, VPN was the solution to get around it.

[curph]

You are arguing that freedom of the press is unimportant. Read yourself more carefully and try to view the criticism as an opportunity to improve.

[fxfmember]

I think you're missing the point, Mr. Webster, or spinning what is going on.

Journalists are not complaining about their own plight regarding net access. They are reporting that the Chinese government has (again) going back on its word and pointing out 1) the Chinese government continues to try to manage its image through censorship; and 2) the games are much more important to them in terms of domestic prestige, so that managing what their people see of the Games takes precedence over international criticism over censorship.

It was widely hoped that the Games might be a trigger for the Chinese government and the Chinese people to embrace a more open and less controlled society. Sadly, as this example shows, this does not seem to be the case.

[gwbstr]

My argument is not that censorship is good or unobjectionable. It is two fold: (1) that reporters will be fine, as they have been over years of restricted internet, with simple workarounds, and (2) that rather than sources worldwide publishing hundreds of stories about the fact that reporters' internet is restricted, which we have indeed seen in the last week, they might consider reporting on the situation faced by Chinese people.

I've similarly argued that, when the English Wikipedia was unblocked, expats shouldn't have been all that happy, because the Chinese was still inaccessible. In a way, if open internet was provided to journalists, it would have avoided this whole flurry of stories, and many reporters might have ignored the restrictions outside the Olympic media center. I'm just not sure this attention has any affect one way or another on the controls that China's internet users face every day.

[gerrrg]

Whoa Graham, hold on a second. Not everyone that is a journalist works for some corporation with dedicated IT.

That's old-school thinking.

In the new millenium with the ubiquity of technology, anyone can be their own journalist. To witness, crackdowns in Myanmar, Tibet and just about anywhere else, is now broadcast 'round the world live, and non-corporate bloggers report live on the scene. Mainstream journalism appears to have become the lapdogs of corporations and governments, reporting face-value information presented them. Anyone remember the way journalists generally fell into line post-9/11? Did you read the BOCOG statement about Falun Gong? No one called out their lie, nor the IOC's complicity of perpetuating a dualism between being a 'sporting association' and a 'political association'.

If only mainstream journalists have access to VPN setups, the everyday, common-wo/man journalists are suffering from repression of their basic human rights, as identified by the United Nations.

And if NBC is complaining about the situation, it seems that even SOME mainstream media outlets are also suffering from the bureaucratic and repressive Chinese government.

[cheezr]

i think the answer is very clear, there is no way in hell that i could report on a sporting event without full unrestricted access to amnesty international's website. Judging from the volume of the whining by the media/b'sphere this is correct!

[gerrrg]

The problem is, you don't know:
A. What sites are blocked and aren't;
B. Whether the Chinese government is secretly censoring in real time, your transmissions of data;
C. Even with a VPN, you're probably wireless, which means that if you're not configured right, you're still going to have vulnerabilities...has your IT patched that Cisco VPN issue from a couple years ago? What about Netgear's?

[blacklogic1]

It's also possible to use VPN for bypassing local Internet restrictions.

http://blacklogic.com

[VPNMaster]

OMG! I think, that http://world-secure-channel.com is better. IMHO