Media Censorship: Tienanmen Square

Sturken and Cartwright discuss this iconic image of a young man standing in front of a procession of tanks in Tienanmen Square in 1989 on pages 232-33 in the textbook. The question of censorship in media has been a hot political topic as long as national media have existed. Whether or not we are directly cognizant of it, essentially all media are censored. According to Sturken and Cartwright, "when labor activists, students, and intellectuals joined together to protest government corruption and to call for democracy, the Chinese government blocked media coverage, banning foreign press from the country and tightly controlling coverage by the media of the People's Republic of China" (232). Although we consider censorship by the government to be incompatible to a democratic nation, we often forget that the United States government actively censors material in media--photographs of dead soldiers and child pornography are not seen in American newspapers and television.

Song mentioned in class that an interesting "experiment" would be to search "Tienanmen Square" on American google and Chinese google and compare the search results. After class on Wednesday, I did such a search and the findings were quite interesting:

Each website listed on American google almost consistently refers to the protests of 1989. The iconic image of the young man in front of the tanks is also listed, as well as various news reports about the protests. Words such as "massacre, bloody, killing, mass demonstration" appear under the website descriptions.

Interestingly, the famous photograph previously mentioned is listed under the search results on Chinese google. However, not one of the websites listed mentions the famous protests that took place on the square in 1989. All of the results are websites about the physical features of the square--how it is one of the largest city squares in the world and in important part of Beijing and Chinese culture.

Censorship remains an interesting issue in modern political and social thought. Although China's "communism" is beginning to appear strikingly similar to Western democracy, "media access and information flow within and out of China continues to be controversial" (Sturken and Cartwright 233). If the Chinese can have a burger from McDonald's and enjoy a cup of coffee from Starbucks, why can't they research an important historical event on google? The things governments will do to stay in power.

Photo: http://aroundtheedges.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/and-you-cant-speak-of-tiananmen/