Obama’s Janet Jackson Moment on CCTV

January 21st, 2009 at 12:23 pm (Uncategorized)

Since everybody is talking about it, I have a question: if the Chinese state media are supposed to be such masters of message control, how come they didn’t think to use a 10 second delay? Or a full minute? It’s not like there’s much competition on the airwaves. And how prepped are their messengers? The anchor is panicky and I swear the analyst gulps. They’re spending 45 billion RMB to extend this around the world?

1 Comment

  1. Uln said,

    January 21, 2009 at 6:42 pm

    Good question.

    I think they didn’t do the delay because they thought there wouldn’t be anything requiring censorship. Then they were surprised by that first sentence with communism and suddenly panicked.

    It is as much a faux pas as anything else, typical of a system where little men with contacts are given power, and where nobody has to face individual responsibiliies or give explanations to the audience.

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