Censorship in China isn't just about banning YouTube

The headline of the day is that China is blocking YouTube. The far scarier news, however, is that China is also blocking access to both CNN and the BBC. Not on the Internet (although that's happening, too). On the airwaves. Reports BBC World Editor Mark Pruszewicz, via a blog post:

As a presenter began reading the introduction to a report on events in Tibet, screens in China showing BBC World would suddenly go black. It wasn't consistent - some reports would go out unmolested one hour, only to be taken off air the next."

CNN Bejing Bureau Chief Jamie FlorCruz confirms the same:

The news of the day was unpalatable to the Chinese censors, so most of CNN’s reports in the mainland were blacked out."

It has become tempting in recent years, thanks to endless Western media coverage of Internet controls, to think of censorship in China as merely a game of cat and mouse between clever netizens and Communist Party bureaucrats. In fact, media censorship in China remains very real and very rampant. It's not just about blocking YouTube. As FlorCruz notes, CNN reporters have been allowed into Tibet just twice in the last 10 years. Explains McClatchy's Tim Johnson, from an undisclosed location in Sichuan province:

None of us can enter Tibet, which is off limits to foreign reporters without a permit. I know of only one foreign journalist, James Miles of The Economist, who had the good fortune to be in Lhasa as events unfolded over the past few days.... We foreign reporters all take precautions. We have to switch vehicles often. Some of us swap out SIM cards in our mobile phones, or just turn them off. That way, authorities cannot triangulate mobile phone signals and figure out our locations."

In bidding for the Olympic Games, China promised the International Olympic Committee improvments on human rights and media freedoms. Just before the Tibet protests, Beijing's media minders had began touting increased freedoms for reporters. But if their behavior over the last week is any indication, they were never too serious about that at all.