15 October 2014
The Chinese government has blocked access in the country to the BBC’s English-language websites.
The blocking of all BBC English language internet pages would appear to be in response to Hong Kong’s “Occupy Central” civil disobedience movement, protesting for fair representation in Chinese elections. Earlier today, the BBC had published video of Hong Kong police assaulting and arresting a protestor which had been circulating online.
In a statement, BBC Global News director Peter Horrocks said: “The BBC strongly condemns any attempts to restrict free access to news and information and we are protesting to the Chinese authorities. This appears to be deliberate censorship. The BBC provides impartial, trusted news to millions of people around the world, and attempts to censor our news services show just how important it is to get our accurate information to them.”
News of the blocking was first announced today by GreatFire.org, a site which monitors web censorship in China in real time. Access to the BBC websites has previously been allowed in China, although the BBC’s Chinese language website has been blocked since its launch. The BBC reported that the last time the BBC’s English-language site was blocked was during its coverage of activist Chen Guangcheng’s escape from house arrest in April 2012.
Instagram, which had been used by Hong Kong protestors to share images, was blocked in China at the end of September. Twitter, Facebook and YouTube are also inaccessible from mainland China.
25 November 2013
Vizrt Ltd. announced today a contract worth USD 260,000 for the implementation of Broadcast Graphics products with a major broadcaster in China. The broadcaster is an existing Vizrt customer, and the new purchase is an add-on to already installed systems.
The deal includes several Viz Engines, Vizrt’s real-time graphics and video compositing engine. The Viz Engines will increase the broadcaster’s capacity to display on-air graphics for channel branding and add another graphics channel for their news character generator.
6 March 2013
The Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) today condemned attempts that are being made to interfere with the broadcasts of international broadcasters on short wave in the Asia region.
English-language broadcasts from the BBC World Service, Radio Australia and Voice of America beamed towards China are being deliberately interfered with by the jamming of a number of frequencies. Such jamming makes it difficult or sometimes impossible to listen to the broadcasts that include news, current affairs, science and entertainment.
Research undertaken by the broadcasters and by independent monitors in the Asia region indicate that the source of the jamming is within the People’s Republic of China.
“AIB condemns this latest interference to the broadcasts of the BBC, ABC Radio Australia and Voice of America,” said Simon Spanswick, chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasting. “Free access to information is a universal human right, and this interference is preventing audiences based within China to hear news from outside the country. It comes at a time when China’s own international broadcasters – on radio and television – are expanding rapidly around the world. They do not suffer from attempts by other nations to silence them. AIB calls on China to cease its jamming activities.”
Broadcasts in Mandarin from broadcasters including the BBC, Radio Free Asia and Voice of America have been interfered with for many years. This is the first time that English-language services have been targeted in such a widespread way.
AIB is lodging protests with the Chinese Foreign Ministry and its Missions in Canberra, London and Washington DC.
Read the press release here.
24 September 2010
It seems as though we have been waiting a long time for voting to start in the People’s Choice category, “Best Coverage of Climate Change”. We launched the 2010 AIBs, international media excellence awards, on 12th April 2010 and were excited to announce our two new categories – one for “Best Children’s Factual Programme/Series” and the other the People’s Choice.
The People’s Choice is a radical departure for the AIB, since it will be the first time that an award has been judged by online viewers rather than a panel of distinguished broadcasters. We had lots of questions to consider before launching it: “Would broadcasters want to submit their work to be judged by online viewers?”, “Would we have enough entries?”, “Would we attract a big enough online audience?”. But we felt that with the increasing convergence of broadcast and online media it was important to reflect this with an award that involved the online community and the new ways that broadcasters need to engage with their audience and obtain direct feedback. We also felt that the chosen subject for 2010, climate change, attracts such wide interest and even controversy, that viewers will be drawn to watch the short list and make their own choice.
The first set of questions, about broadcasters’ involvement, has been satisfactorily answered with a high quality field of entries from which it was difficult to chose the short list. The resulting short list contains strong entries from major broadcasters such as the BBC, CNN and Sky, as well as important contributions from China (Phoenix Satellite TV) and the United Nations – not forgetting the Belgian entry from VRT.
Now we are excited that a small selected group are trying out our system in a “Premiere” viewing of the entries and that general voting will begin next Monday. We will be building up the campaign to involve the largest possible number of viewers from all over the world during the next month.
If you are not part of the Premiere viewing that is currently going on, why not instead have a look at some of the interesting entries that did not quite make the short list? Click here to view them.
16 September 2010
We are delighted to announce a high quality and truly international set of short listed entries for the People’s Choice category at the 2010 AIBs.
The “Best Coverage of Climate Change” award will be decided by online voting between:
• “Going Green – The Climate Summit” from CNN International
• “Low Impact Man” from VRT, Belgium
• “Earth Rescue Operation” from Phoenix Satellite Television in Hong Kong, China
• “Hard Talk on the Road to Greenland” from the BBC
• “Ross Kemp: Battle for the Amazon” from Sky Television
• “21st Century” from the UN
The full press release can be seen here
The Chinese government has blocked access in the country to the BBC’s English-language websites.