All the News That's Fit To Censor: International Edition

Share this

"The Internet may be new, but not the issue of whether an American corporation should do business with bad people," writes Richard Cohen. He argues that the claims of Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Yahoo and other tech companies that they are assisting the Chinese government's attempts to censor information online because they must "comply with local laws" ring false. "The law in China is what the Chinese leaders say it is," Cohen counters. The Washington Post reports that Google, in agreeing to block "objectionable" content from searches on its Chinese portal, has joined the list of shame. Chinese authorities have also shut down the China Youth Daily publication Freezing Point, after it "criticized the history textbooks used in Chinese middle schools." According to Reuters, the BBC's Farsi-language news website has been blocked by Iranian authorities.