THE POWER OF BLOGGING
by Laura P. Valtorta
In China these days, bloggers are able to evade authority and exercise more free speech than traditional journalists. This is partly because bloggers use pseudonyms. Chinese authorities tend to quash any criticism of the government. Chinese blogs persist at this point, but the Chinese government would like to force contributors to register under their true names.
The 17 June 2010 issue of Avvenire, (a Catholic newspaper I tend to read in Italy because the writing is simpler than in other newspapers) contained an article about Han Han, a 27-year-old blogger on Sina.org who is followed by 300 million readers. Han apparently has a lot to say about the recent killings of schoolchildren in China and the inability of the government to prevent these killings. Avvenire, being Catholic, emphasized that most modern Chinese families have only one child, because that is all the law allows, and the loss of a child in China is therefore particularly harsh. But the death of a schoolchild is always horrific.
Most newspapers are biased. Most forms of writing, whether fiction or non-fiction espouse a particular point of view. The Chinese government apparently slants news in favor of the communist party. In Italy, journalists make no secret of their bias, writing for newspapers that are communist or Catholic or Christian Democrat and pointing the news in that direction. Avvenire, like the Catholic Church, would have us produce as many children as possible, regardless of the effect on the environment, because the Church wants more members. The Church wants to keep women in line. They dislike the fact that Italy, a crowded country, has a negative birth rate. Italy, unlike the United States, is beginning to control its pollution problem. Maybe the Church doesn’t like that, either.
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