Speaking up about the coronavirus – but at what cost? | The Listening Post (Full)

Chinese doctor who sounded the alarm Hello, I'm Richard Gisbert and you're in the

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position among the media stories covering this week transparency, the type managed Beijing-za The approach to controlling the

coronavirus

narrative remains a work in progress and trying to keep pandemic fear contained in places like Germany, they are loud, can be intimidating, call themselves nationalists and are some of the most watched news actors in India, plus the Duterte government in Manila has gone after news websites it doesn't like. now targeting the country's largest broadcaster two weeks ago, when we first examined China's official response to the corona virus outbreak Beijing was in damage control mode the government had been slow to respond its media outlets had downplayed the severity of the threat and lives were lost as As a result of one such death, a doctor in the border city of Wuhan caused collective outrage online.

Li Wen Liang was one of the first to raise the alarm; He was then arrested and forced to confess to having committed irregularities in spreading rumors for essentially doing his job. It is rare for the Chinese to openly criticize their government, and even rarer when those criticisms on social media are not instantly deleted by censors; However, for a brief period of time, that is

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was happening online for Chinese journalists; There was a temporary window that opened for some toughs. -hitting investigative reports it seems the window has closed again the term China watchers are now using to describe Beijing's approach to the

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story is inherently contradictory they call it managed transparency our starting point this week is the Ground Zero, the whoo-hah city of Of all the victims of this coronavirus, none has made more news in China than Dr.

Lee, when Aang on December 30, Lee used a closed messaging group to tell his colleagues about the severity of the strain, he said he did not intend to share the message, and was then detained and forced to apologize for spreading rumors. Read handling of the virus and probably about the cover-up of the facts, but we would not expect this type of outpouring of anger towards the government. She came up online. People widely commented that they also

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ed something like a speech about freedom of speech on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, and then that hashtag was the whopping 1.8 million+ times before you got deleted when there are so many people who they feel so strongly about his death that it would be unwise for authorities to simply like every comment they leave from the start, even the person to target. state media member reported on his death, but the language they used is primarily focused now on, you know, we have a lot of respect for this doctor because of

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he did as a doctor, not what he did as a whistleblower.

Darian geometry, attention. occasion when hundreds of sushi suka romulans I can't eat each other chin chin one wonders why they are focusing on a part they want people to focus on about dr. Liang Liang, but not really the part that people mainly care about freedom of expression, citizens have taken the coronavirus story into their own hands and devices, it is the biggest change since the 2003 SARS coronavirus story , the Chinese had access to the Internet back then, but social media was nothing like the news source it is today. Chen Qi or She, a lawyer turned blogger, has documented the hospital's overload with patients.

Fang Ben, who is in the clothing business,

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ed images of body bags destined for the crematorium and then had his phone camera recording. When the authorities called they are now supposed to be in custody, but there are another 50 million people in quarantine and they have plenty of time to tell their stories. The role of social media in covering this crisis has been unprecedented. It was the first epidemic. first major disease in China to be truly televised, so whether you're stuck at home alone in Wuhan without seeing any family or unable to buy food, if your doctor is fighting this disease in a crowded hospital, or if your patient has difficulties to enter At the hospital we are seeing the stories through social networks.

Anyone far from Wuhan, including international observers, has been able to witness and even feel what it is like to be part of this epidemic. It's something that I think is really moving, it's emotional but also. puts a lot of pressure on state authorities at local and central levels to react to defeat this disease and unite people. It also exposes the country's major news channels that for weeks provided far less information than social media as national, especially national, media outlets. The channels and newspapers have been controlled by the state since the communists took power more than 70 years ago.

There have been some temporary opportunities for more adventurous reporting, most recently around the time of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Those freedoms were already dissipating in 2012, when Jinping took power in 2016 with the president sweeping the media demanding with his words his absolute loyalty to the party in political thought and action in coronavirus coverage that is what the new president achieved Shin hosts an opinion program on the state channel CG Tien, there is a fundamental premise that is wrong with this question: that the State media could have a different agenda by not reporting the truth of the story, basically when CCTV, the statement in its words, interviewed one of China's top experts in the fight against the virus on January 20 and mr. donation to people: India was then when the public was alerted to the possible scale and potential severity of this epidemic, so I don't think there was anywhere in the state media that was suppressing the seriousness of the situation, but the excitement of the interview refers to January 20 came more than three weeks after dr.

Lee wen Liang had spread the word that it was old news; There has been top-notch journalism produced by Chinese news outlets, but not on national television and not for long of that size. Shin Media Group specializes in periodicals and online content, according to The Economist magazine. The size of the ship is the strangest thing in China. A brave media outlet that seeks the truth despite intimidation. They produce probably the best coronavirus coverage yet, so they had this four-part coverage of the virus and it reveals how the verse unfolded in Wuhan. and how the government has probably covered up some of the facts about the barriers and delayed reporting on the barriers that led to the public crisis that they know about and that it was quite remarkable to do such intense coverage because normally they would be subject to heavy censorship, But the freedom Shin had to do that reporting would prove temporary.

By early February, the window for most of that kind of journalism had slammed shut. Chinese media have since shifted their focus to the positive side of the story. Doctors, officials and humanitarian workers describe in heroic terms the standard for such messages. The emphasis on collective response over the search for accountability is set by state control channels such as CG Tian and CCTV in almost all reports, few media portals. open chinese news you will see that they are mostly positive reports celebrating the heroes of the virus the medical professionals the officials were fighting it the public themselves the common media forget about Yong Yong here we are, you know, together and every Chinese person has to fight and we are there for the nation and of course the Sikh president himself has appeared in a media spotlight for the first time since the outbreak of the crisis we visited a local residential area in Beijing he was wearing a mask and he was

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with the local people and people were responding very actively with great spirit I would say that One video that I noticed was viewed almost 15 million times and got over 200,000 approvals so I think people in general responded well to his message that he's there, you know, with the people being with the masses and showing his leadership.

Xi Jinping went to this. hospital in Beijing and video chatted with Han doctors, but one thing we should keep in mind is that Xi Jinping has never sent food to Wuhan until now, but what we really want is to know what the central government has in plan to really cure . disease to really address the issue and really respond to people's demands for freedom of expression, but I think those central questions will probably never be answered. We're discussing another media story that crossed our radar this week with Maree arresting a Filipino journalist who runs one of the most popular news websites in the country, rapper Maria, thank you for joining us here on today's

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post, always a pleasure to see last week, the Attorney General in Manila moved to shut down the country's main news outlet, abs-cbn, which likes its rapper has been a vocal critic of President Duterte, the so-called war on drugs Can you explain the case that prosecutors are bringing against abs-cbn?

Here, the basis of it, the Attorney General's office says that there is this obscure legal term quo warranto that they should never have been awarded a franchise first of all because of violations because they charged for television and then second is because they have something similar to what the rapper has: Philippine depositary receipts that allow foreign control. Both have been approached in different ways and have been shown to be flawed by legal experts. Can you give us a little more detail about these PDRs because I know a lot of people who, from outside the Philippines, find them a little confusing?

The media in the Philippines has to be 100% Filipino owned, but to deal with this because it is not just about media, other companies, such as telecommunications infrastructure companies, have restrictions on foreign ownership in order to have foreign investors, A vehicle called PDRs Philippine Depositary Receipts was created and it is constitutionally recognized that a PBR does not grant ownership over a share, it does not grant a vote, it does not grant any type of control, what it does do is that a foreign investor can enter and obtain economic returns, you won the case, one reason for that was that your foreign investor, Pierre Omidyar, dumped the shares and, as I understand it, donated his shares to Filipino charities.

Do you see any kind of possibility that abs-cbn could end up with a similar result approach? I think we have to hold the line PD, ours are legal, in fact, in our appeals court case, the Court of Appeals said they are legal, that's not how you beat the case, we haven't beat it yet the case in 2018, I had 11 cases and investigations against me and Rattler, in 2019 I had to pay bail eight times to be free, so these cases are still ongoing, we did not prevent it by having Pierre Omidyar donate, this is something that They did it because they wanted to eliminate it in their mind, they did it independently of rapper. but I still question this is a question of law, so Duterte starts with the media, but you told me that you are seeing signs that this government is now going further, looking at other institutions and trying to maybe capture some of they.

Coincidentally, it started with the media, at all, it goes back to the 1970s and then it goes back to 1986. Any time someone wants to take control of the government, the first step is to control the media; that is the first step of Ferdinand Marcos in 1972. he closed abs-cbn and controlled it, he took over it in 1986, the popular power revolt that got rid of Markos, the first step was to take over the television networks, this It's the 21st century version of that, but the interesting thing is that you don't even have to declare martial law to try to control the media.

You hang a sword of Damocles over the owners and their families. You threaten them with legal cases and you can control them this way. María Rosa, thank you for

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with us again today. Good luck. your case Thank you India's news landscape is unique: the country has nearly 400 news channels broadcasting 24/7 in 22 official languages ​​for the last decade. Indians witnessed the emergence of a new generation of news anchors, brash, aggressive, unapologetic, nationalistic, who trade in conflict, fear and spectacle. It's a formula that tends to pay off in the ratings and online. One of the mainpractitioners of this new style is Arnab Goswami of Republic TV.

Swami has a huge following, particularly among supporters of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP government, and has many critics who call his coverage of issues related to Indian Muslims partisan and divisive, saying he has abandoned journalism altogether. . Meenakshi Ravi is now at a controversial broadcaster that has pioneered aggressive, high-decibel nationalist news coverage in India. Goswami is rarely silent when There is a camera in the daily cacophony that bombards the Indian airwaves. Goswami is one of the loudest and most controversial voices, so it was something of an exclusive when late last month an Indian comedian Kunal Camera tweeted a video of Arnab Goswami being unusually quiet.

The camera had caught Goswami. on a flight his interaction was not pleasant, the seat belt signs are off so I thought now is the time to go and confront him or talk to him or try to have a conversation with him. I touched him and said, iron, could you? would you like to talk to me he said I'm going to call I'm going to call him and then he said he doesn't want to talk to me he doesn't want to interact with me and then I said but why are we the kind of people you should associate with and then I said I'll do exactly what your reporters They do with other people that I watch and I recorded that video that I'm not sorry at all because they totally deserve it, confronting someone on air, shoving a camera in their face, peppering them with questions is unconventional and almost rude.

Goswami had reason to be offended, except this is a tactic his own reporters use, let's play interview. of Deepti with fair feet, how he was a meter, this is not the right place to talk about what Kunal managed to do with that act and I would call it an act, rather it is to draw our attention to how absolutely ugly I am. I'm not saying it wasn't unpleasant, but it was a democratic act. I was just doing what Arnab Goswami does day in and day out if it would make even ten people wonder how we have normalized this and I think he has done a good job when we haven't.

He does his primetime show, yells, interrupts his panelists, so maybe this time it was, you know, a taste of his own medicine. I've worked closely for the past few years and thank

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y he hasn't yelled at me. Goswami is the face of Republic TV. A channel in which he has a majority stake and its co-owner is a parliamentarian and member of India's ruling party, the right-wing BJP, the channel was launched three years into the Modi government's first term in 2017, when Goswami told his audience what it would be like I am a nationalist and I want to say today that I believe that being a nationalist is a prerequisite to be a journalist.

Goswami wraps himself in the flag whether he is covering Pakistan, the Indian Army and any story involving Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Prime Minister. who hardly gives interviews and never holds press conferences has sat down with Goswami for a one-on-one talk and Modi has also attended the annual events organized by the channel, the so-called Republic summits, the publican Goswami is unapologetic in his support of Modi like Fox News in the US is for his support of Donald Trump, however, the relationship goes back further than that, for 10 years until 2016. Goswami was the editor-in-chief of another channel x now, where he honed his act until it became what it is today.

Arnab Goswami really burst onto the scene during the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008. I remember watching him back then, when I was a journalism student, this was completely new for India back then, carnauba sama took that space from the aggressive Fox News , who was a kind of presenter and from then on he was very successful in taking advantage of the anger or anger of the middle class against politicians against corruption. Republic TV is known as India's Fox network, but there is a large section of the population in India who loved to watch Republic TV and Arnab Goswami, so let's attack. all the population that is watching yes there have been cases where I said the reporting has been problematic at the moment, unfortunately we see a trend in India where the media just goes crazy, we should take a call and see if we should move on to a second plane. and just report, just report and that's what we are here to do we requested an interview with Arnab Goswami for this report we were told that neither he nor anyone at Republic would engage with the foreign media and their unbalanced approach to quotes that response is consistent with Goswami's frequent on-air statements critical of media outlets both in India and abroad for their reporting on Indian issues that he dismisses as misguided and weak.

Goswami delivers those judgments from his anchor desk, where he slams panelists and pedals hashtags that range from the provocative to the incendiary in the Indian media landscape, where television is self-regulated, making Republic or any channel perform. accounts is almost impossible; In fact, last year, the National Broadcasting Standards Association, a group made up of representatives of Indian channels, issued an edict for Republic to issue an apology for an ethical violation by the channel. He did not simply dismiss the order, he spearheaded the formation of a new self-regulatory body, the Federation of News Broadcasters, the president of the Federation being Arnab Goswami.

Goswami's aggressive, high-decibel style has inspired many others, from Rahul Srivastava and Novica Kumar in current times, to Amish live. News Gun 18 and Ruby Kali occurred on a channel called BP. I think what is normalized is propaganda disguised as journalism. It seems that he is saying in prime time and then it circulates on WhatsApp, circulates on social networks, etc. and there is a section. of the public who are just getting that and, obviously, I mean to some extent they can't be blamed for believing that there must be some truth to it, if not the whole truth. I think what worries people like Arnab Goswami is that he can go on a news channel and smear people like anti-nationalism, the despicable words and anti-national behavior of people like in our mana, being on the right, seeing things like that we don't need to worry about human rights and Kashmir or just branding people as terrorists.

Get out of my car, you know where we don't have democratic institutions that are going to stop such hateful misinformation and propaganda and when you don't have them, you essentially have journalists like this who can really influence people's perceptions en masse. propaganda with politics and media becoming more polarized around the world - it has become the norm - TV presenters do it on air, people do it to each other online and one Indian comedian felt he was the only one way to confront a news anchor; The consequences of trolling are not felt the same for Canal Camera, however.

The rejection of his ambush on Goswami was led by the country's Aviation Minister. His tweet praising an Indian airline for putting a camera on a six-month no-fly list resulted in three other airlines following Camerado's lead. The focus of the entire incident remains Arnab Goswami. All I know is that there is someone watching this man. He puts on a good theatrical show to absorb you and entertain you very well, and it polarizes you and that polarization is leaving the televisions. go out you should realize what you instigated realize what you're bringing to the table and realize how it's impacting lives don't open your mouth why don't you know you've talked to Mario?