Media

OURMedia 6th International Conference held in Sydney is really more like a shopping mall than an academic conference. That's why the first question of the exit survey is about how many contacts during these four days one made. So I'd better talk about the interesting websites and media project we came across rather than the issues.

I like the Italian project of EuroMayDay which has been promoting an alternative image of workering class for the "precarious labourer". A group of Italian activists design a lot of interesting icons for people to make use of in their movement. As a catholic country, the icons of saint are so popular. They invent a holy icon for the precarious. They further design a lot of cards to showing some the images of different kinds of workers.

(Editor note: this article is written for indymedia book project which will come out later this year.)

By Gabriele Hadl and Sun-quan Huang (‘Inertia’)

IMC Taiwan (Twimc http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.twimc.org) was set up by members of POTS (Taipei alternative free weekly paper), and Twblog.net (an experimental blogging network), teachers, mainstream media people, grassroots and activist groups. The site existed from 2003- 2005, the collective was active from 2003-04.

Joel Martinsen at Danwei.org has briefed a recent Chinese media response to the alleged "Anti-China" sentiment of the West that was printed by the official Glabal People magazine. The magazine summarizes those western "attacks" as stemming from absurd theories like "China Threat", "China Collapse", "China Split" and "Yellow Peril".

story originated from:inmediahk.net(oiwan)
translated by shareef; proof-read by: ayeah

In the early September, the RTHK began to invite tenders for the distribution of the second batch of programs, the tender invitation phase has already ended on 11th of October. The tenders are now under review. The programs involved in this batch includes >‘a century of dream factory’ (note 1 百年夢工場) and ‘success stories series’(note 2 傑出華人系列).

Hong Kong government's Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) and police officers had raided Citizen Radio again recently (October 13). As Hong Kong government refuses to grant radio broadcasting license to civic organizations, in order to participate in public broadcasting, the organizers of Citizen Radio have to go underground and take the risk of violating the unreasonable laws. The police has confisticated all their equipment and arrested the organizers. It is a repressive action against freedom of speech. We strongly urge Hong Kong government to open radio bandwidth to the public and return the right of broadcasting to the people.

Public service broadcasting or Public Broadcasting Service is common all over the world. In Hong Kong, the only publicly owned media "Radio and Television Hong Kong (RTHK)" is tightly controlled by Hong Kong government. The management of RTHK is composed of government's administrative officer and civil servants.

China studies scholars in western countries have been concerned with a question: What kind of society has been brought by open-door policy? The reconcilation between FoxConn and The First Financial Daily gives us some hints.

The world outside China has the impression that China's media is controlled by government. It is partially true. Strictly speaking, media in China is janus-faced. Sometimes they look like any media in western countries. Sometimes they seem go back to the old times. The incident of "Freezing Point" (Bingdian) is a recent example.

Despite without a license, a group of activists have run the Citizen's Radio for one year. Last night police and government officers suddenly raided this independent radio stations. They arrested a man and confiscated most equipment.

In response to Foxconn's legal prosecution against a reporter and an editor in the First Financial daily because of their reports on the working condition of i-pod subcontracting factory in Shenzhen, First Financial Daily issued an open letter condemning Foxconn.

In the public statement, the First Financial Daily stated:

1. they would support Wang You and Weng Bao in the trial as Wang You was just fulfilling his duty as reporter.