Google has announced it is no longer willing to censor search results on its Chinese service. The decision marks Google’s readiness to risk being thrown out of the world’s most populous internet market; after all, in order to launch Google.cn in the first place, the company had to agree to censor ‘sensitive’ material – such as details of human rights groups and references to Tiananmen Square.
There have been significant increases in Chinese censorship over the course of the last year, and Google’s response seems to be in united front with the US Government. A State department spokesman has confirmed that ‘Google was in contact with us prior to the announcement’; an announcement which is to be followed next week by the launching of a new US technology policy to help citizens in other countries gain access to an uncensored internet. More in the Guardian HERE; Independent HERE; Times HERE; Telegraph HERE and FT HERE.
John Riley, of Sky News, has hit back against Lord Manelson’s claims that the Sun newspaper has thrown its weight behind the Conservative Party because of a tacit agreement to legislate to protect Sky in the pay-TV sector. Lord Mandelson began this course in response to James Murdoch’s speech last year on the future of tv.
Riley said last night ‘Lord Mandelson is smart enough and experienced enough to know that there is no such link [between editorial decisions at the Sun, and Sky], but you can see why it might suit him to create a different impression…’ He attacked Mandelson for ‘question[ing] Sky’s impartiality … by trying to whip up concern about the fact that BSkyB’s largest shareholder, News Corporation, also owns some of the UK’s most widely read newspapers… At Sky News, we provide impartial and independent news… not because Ofcom tells us to but because it’s what our audience expects of us. In simple terms, it’s good business for us to be impartial.’ More HERE.
Concerns about theatre funding and the fact that the theatre economy is saddled with too much debt and over-reliant on increasingly unreliable revenue streams is blogged about HERE. And discussion of the cycling of stage actors and the lure of new generations of talent to the British stage can be found in the New York Times HERE.
And finally… Hail 2010: The Year of the Legwarmer, in response to reports that five million Brits are now attending dance clubs and classes every week. Even the Department of Health has cottoned on and this month launches its Let’s Dance campaign, part of the Change4Life initiative to tackle obesity. Caroline Miller, of Dance UK, says the seeds for dance’s newfound popularity were sown in the mid-1990s, after their injection of National Lottery funding. More HERE
