from Hacker News

China Bans Americans Working for WSJ, NYT, WaPo

by big_chungus on 3/17/20, 5:12 PM with 171 comments

• by dang on 3/17/20, 11:02 PM

  All: This thread is terrible and violates the spirit of this site in too many ways to list. HN is not a place for nationalistic flamewar or accusing each other. Please don't do that damage here. The container is fragile.

  If this epidemic continues, we're going to do less "please don't" and more "we've banned". I don't mean the coronavirus— I mean the epidemic of violating HN's guidelines. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here.

  The vast majority of the community come here for curious conversation, not to hear people bashing each other and their countries in the same few ways over and over again. That's not only nasty, it's tedious. Please take it elsewhere.

  More explanation in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22605365

• by koboll on 3/17/20, 5:34 PM

  I truly don't understand why "expel Chinese journalists" was even considered as a reasonable course of action by the US.

  It may not explicitly violate the letter of the 1st Amendment, but it certainly violates its spirit, not to mention invites reciprocal action like this that only deepens the fog of war over our most dangerous adversary power.

  There are many, many legitimate ways to punish foreign governments, but the expulsion of reporters should never be among them, unless we are at war with that government.

  "But China did it first!" Well, then we should highlight how outrageous and unacceptable that behavior is, and sanction them some other way. Not reciprocate.

• by Leary on 3/17/20, 5:28 PM

  America will surely retaliate.

  Here's a timeline for those who haven't followed this:

  Feb 3rd: WSJ publishes opinion piece titled "China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia"

  Feb 19th: China expels three China-based WSJ reporters

  March 2nd: America limits journalists from Chinese state media from 160 to 100

• by dmix on 3/17/20, 5:28 PM

  Aw, WSJ videos covering China were some of my favourite content. China is really lashing out.

  Nothing is surprising since they banned Zedd from China simply for liking a South Park tweet, he's a very popular (and harmlessly generic) pop musician:

  https://twitter.com/Zedd/status/1182376966495838208

• by reaperducer on 3/17/20, 5:30 PM

  For thousands of years, tyrants and small-minded people have always tried to shoot the messenger. It seldom stops the message.

• by sub7 on 3/17/20, 5:55 PM

  The US and China are at war. The last Cold War kind of gave us the internet so hopefully we fund some big ambitious tech this time too.

• by vincvinc on 3/17/20, 6:21 PM

  This is a big hit for journalism about China. A lot of very good quality reporting on (among others) Xinjiang came from these people. We will all be much less informed about China in the future.

  The subtle shift in confidence that this action implies is that China is confident in itself after "beating" the virus while the west is struggling.

  A "media war" between China and the US might be worse than a trade war. While a trade war is just about numbers, this will be about ideology and there will be no middle ground.

• by mengibar10 on 3/17/20, 6:16 PM

  There's growing resentment against Western media for the way the news reported. Take a look at following links. I saw one of them personally on NYTimes couple of days ago. The one from CNN below the banner reads "California prisons" but the picture is from a mosque in Istanbul. One incident is a mistake, but multiple times same "mistake" only show malevolence.

  https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg...

  https://img.piri.net/mnresize/840/-/resim/imagecrop/2020/03/...

• by mac01021 on 3/17/20, 6:34 PM

  "... whose press credentials end in 2020" is a significant part of the headline missing from the HN title.

• by predictmktegirl on 3/17/20, 6:10 PM

  It's difficult to have compassion and empathy without discussion. These sorts of maneuvers tend to have horrifying butterfly effects.

• by xster on 3/17/20, 5:36 PM

  I'm surprised they didn't start with outlawing receiving money from NED or subsidiaries first.

• by markmiro on 3/17/20, 6:02 PM

  This signals to me that the outlets are good sources of information

• by seanmcdirmid on 3/17/20, 5:21 PM

  Note that they are also banning from working in Hong Kong and Macau.

• by gwd on 3/17/20, 5:36 PM

  Can't read the article behind a paywall, but this is China's side of the story:

  https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/t1...

  Seems this is part of an ongoing diplomatic spat.

  EDIT: FYI, couldn't read the article due to a paywall, did a search, found out some about the history. Thought this added information to the conversation. Yes, this is clearly propaganda, but I still thought it was interesting. You're all of age, you can read this sort of propaganda without being harmed.

• by coliveira on 3/17/20, 5:59 PM

  This is an information war. The US is also banning Chinese journalists. In the end, everybody is losing and I don't see anyone here doing the right thing.

• by api on 3/17/20, 5:25 PM

  I wonder if they're under-reporting their COVID-19 numbers to win propaganda points.

  Naaaaah... impossible.

• by adultSwim on 3/17/20, 7:14 PM

  I can't blame them..

• by JungleGymSam on 3/18/20, 6:07 AM

  China sucks.

• by bitxbit on 3/17/20, 10:26 PM

  China is going to face a deep recession as corporations rethink supply chain. The communist party needs something to blame and US is a perfect target.

• by datashow2 on 3/17/20, 6:23 PM

  @dang, please ban all accounts involved in this thread.

• by mjevans on 3/17/20, 5:27 PM

  Paywall

• by friedman23 on 3/17/20, 5:49 PM

  What a coincidence, I'm subscribed to most of those!

• by onetimemanytime on 3/17/20, 5:26 PM

  It's war (of words) The Chinese Virus vs US bioweapon. Plus China might be hiding something

• by resters on 3/17/20, 6:16 PM

  Don't forget that the US Government has sought to pursue charges against journalists under the espionage act for reporting on government misconduct, and that America's great firewall (Facebook) started suppressing RT after the 2016 election. Also, Al Jazeera is not carried by most US cable providers.

• by spectramax on 3/17/20, 6:50 PM

  People on HN engaging in whatboutism - can you please find a single article from the CCP state media that criticizes the CCP? I could literally go on WSJ/NYT/WaPo right now and find many articles criticizing US government.

  That's what free press means. China has no tolerance for truth if it collides with the CCP image.