China, Google and Internet censorship

[SmartyPants]

A good reason to censor seditious material is to inculcate a strong nationalism in the people. That way, in case of a war, China will have more manpower.

Isn't that the first rule in having a fascist govenment? 

To your first comment, I have to reply:

So what?

You may disagree, but I don't think Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany are the best models for dealing with the media.

The benefits of censorship are just too slim in all the necessary ways and too easily facilitates corrupt actions. And the cost is immeasurable... literally, due to it being censored and all. :P

The job of the media is to make sure the government is doing what is suspose to do.  If the govenment controls the media, then the government can do whatever they want to do.  That will lead to further corruption and immoral actions in the government.

Free media also leads to rampant yellowness and populism.

Also, media is not, as many seem to think, a magic bullet to sway the people. There are the problems of access to media and living conditions. Ultimately, if there are enough discontented people, the government will lose all its power because it has no base of support.

Yellow Journalism only works with a monopoly on media.  If there is not a monopoly, then competitors will try to discredit the yellow journalists.  Once a news outlit loses credibility then it is hard to gain it back.  For example, competitors were quick to critize CBC for Killian documents controversy.

If the government controled the media, then Americans would not have known there were not weapons of mass destrution in Iraq.  Bush could have kept this information secret, so he wouldn't lose support.

Your weasel wording also disturbs me; what do you define as immoral or corrupt, and what evidence do you have to back it?

Your tyrannical ideas for the media disturb me, so we are even.
I consider government officials lieing to serve their's own means as immoral and corrupt.
I have not seen any evidence to support your cynical views of the media.

[Ertxiem]

Pylons and im2smart4u, please control your temper. Insults will get you nowhere and will drive away other people from here.

Government control of the media happens in many countries in many different ways. The government may own the media, which is the explicit way to do things, or the government may allow a limited number of media operating (like the restriction in TV frequencies). This latter way of doing things happens in most democratic countries (and is justified by the maintenance of the quality of TV emissions). However, it opens the door to the government giving a licence to the firm that gives the most favourable opinion to the government.

Immoral and corrupt people exist everywhere (from the common worker to the top of the governments) and the effective control is quite hard. We have a real problem when the people that can make laws to control the corruption are themselves corrupt.

[KZ]

Ultimately, I believe Guye in his initial statement summed up pretty well the situation one ideally would hope to have on the hands, with im2smart4u's comments pretty much accounting for a couple of remarks made by Pylons.

Coming from one of the historically "corrupt" places on earth where the government tended/s to do what it more or less pleases and not really cares much for the benefit of the people, remarks like "so what?" on the possibiliy of limitation of personal freedoms, including free speech are really worrying. Methinks many don't really realize what they can lose, unless they grew up in a place that was re-trying to re-gain some of those freedoms. The government should be, ideally,a proportionate reflection of the desires of the people on how the society should be run, what it's general code of morals and ethics should comprise, and what inreactions the said society wishes to have with other societies. But more often than not, those who are deemed to be the "voice of the people" will try to further their own means and try to keep to the power. Or, as time passes, geniuinely believe that the are executing the general wish of the people, but having been "isolated" from the rest of the society, they might not realize that this is not exactly what people want.
One inetersting phenomena that sprung up with the social networks is the micro-local political blogs or forums, where the local communities can come together and try to pressure local officials into hearing their opinions (BBC recently covered that in relation to UK), and although sometimes the local desires are sacrificed for the greater good of the nation (e.g. where to build prisons, nuclear reactors, highways, etc), methinks this might be a more effective way of keeping the people "at the top" in loop with what the common folks want. Though, of course, sometimes, like now in Begium, for instance, the voice of the people is quite divided, and that's where those in the government should work off their pay by trying to reach a solution that would satisfy the majority of the people.
And although the government is supposed to keep alive and protect the society it is running, I am not really at ease with the ways that they do it, on occaison, like censorship. Look at Russia, for instance- the media is centralized, not much of an "opposition" to look at, the people in no way can complain about the dire economic situation in the rest of the country nor quizz the officials about what exactly, if at all, the "old dollars" from the last decade were invested in? There was a lot of talk of diversifying the economy, and the Russian government had a great chance of having the money and the means to attempt to do just that, but judging by the current situation, none of that diversification happened... Yet the folks in power have ensure that the next president stays in power for 6 years, not 4, most influential independent people with money (aka oligarchs) suddenly have "tax issues" so cannot sponsor any opposition activuty and many human rights layers, jorunalists covering tricky topics like Chechnya, or judges making rulings on significant cases (e.g. prosecution of a Moscow-based group of Neo-Nazis) are dropping dead all over the place with a worrying indifferent reaction from the rest of the society. Throw in international relations, where Russia and China don't mount much pressure on N. Korea or Iran (two countries that might have the means to destabilize peace in their respective regions and are looking with one eye at nuclear weapons option), and Russia playing "you pay or we cut the gas" with the rest of the Europe, also gets a few uneasy looks. Methinks at least a few of those aspects are a cause for concern and, methinks, and the ends don't always jusify the means.