Some links and news briefs

Since I haven't had time to write about anything at length lately, here are a few links to interesting articles.

In this news article, a human rights report issued by the Taiwan government pointed to the concentration of media ownership as a matter for concern. This is certainly a serious problem, particularly given the pro-China slant of one of the largest media groups, the Want Want Group. Despite their silly name, their power in Taiwanese media is a serious matter. There are other problems with Taiwan's media not mentioned here, such as overly partisan reporting and an obsession with trivial, sensationalized stories (not that these problems are exclusive to Taiwan). With regard to the concentration of media ownership, I might note that in another article I read recently, on problems with media freedom in Balkan countries such as Macedonia, someone mentioned that the problem there wasn't a lack of media outlets, but that there were two many competing for too little money, resulting in a tendency to go for easy sensationalism rather than tackling difficult stories, and that they would be better off with fewer but better funded media entities. This makes sense, but obviously there's a happy medium where you've got enough news sources to ensure that a variety of viewpoints are being presented, but not so many that they have engage in cutthroat competition. For that matter, as I noted, even with a narrow concentration of media power in a few hands Taiwanese media still engage in sensationalism. But this is a complex issue, with the media and the public both deserving a share of the blame, and an in-depth discussion will have to wait for another day.

A big news story internationally was Chen Guangcheng's escape from his village to the US embassy in Beijing (two of the many related stories can be read here and here). The thuggish behavior of the local officials in Chen's home village in Shandong has been in the news before, but his escape forced the US to deal directly with his plight. I won't comment on how they did except to say that they could have been more forceful in their dealings with China. As for China, what is particularly disgraceful is that they openly tolerate this kind of behavior by local officials -- at least until the local people rise up in large numbers, in which case they will sometimes be forced to step in. While Chen is hardly the only dissident in China to suffer from severe oppression and mistreatment by the authorities (something which neither the US nor concerned people around the world should forget), his case further exposes how far China has to go to become a nation that shows even minimal respect for human rights.

Finally, here are a couple more links to articles on unrelated topics (though the first has some relationship to the two above): one is about how a judge in the US ruled that a recent law relating to detention of terror suspects violates the First Amendment, and the second is about the pluses and minuses of the huge charitable foundation started by Bill and Melinda Gates. Both of these articles raise some interesting points that are worth expanding on, but for now I'll let them speak for themselves, other than to say I think the judge made the right ruling.