MIRANDA PAK WRITES – China’s biggest e-commerce company, Alibaba is rumored to be in talks about investing in SCMP Group Ltd, which publishes Hong Kong’s leading English newspaper the South China Morning Post. According to China Daily, Alibaba is trying to expand into the media and entertainment industries. More specifically, the e-commerce entity…
Tag: Asia Media International
CHINA/U.S.: SHOULD THE XI JINPING CHARM OFFENSIVE SOUND AN ALARM?
THIS TOM PLATE COLUMN APPEARS COURTESY OF THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST, WHERE IT FIRST APPEARED 9 NOVEMBER: China’s new focused diplomacy, as viewed in an off-balance U.S., is close to remarkable. After all the past foreign-policy fog, through which it was sometimes hard to see where Beijing stood, we…
INDIA: Social Media’s answer to Shiv Sena
ADRIAN NARAYAN WRITES– Can online declarations of love defeat real-world violence and intolerance? A few thousand Indian and Pakistani social media users are trying to find out. Connected by a mutual concern about the current state of Indian-Pakistani relations, internet users have been posting photos of themselves and short statements of peace…
SOUTH KOREA: Popular App is a Bad Babysitter
SABRINA VERDUZCO WRITES – Smart Sheriff, the most widely used child-monitoring app in South Korea, has been pulled from the market and public sphere altogether, after issues with privacy and security raised concerns about the program’s safety. Initially, the surveillance app was created with the intent to serve as a pseudo-babysitter, where parents…
PHILIPPINES: Duterte Drama Reaches Anticlimactic Conclusion
MARY GRACE COSTA WRITES – In the mood to binge-watch a Filipino TV drama for a long afternoon of frustration, confusion, and catharsis? Look no further than the #DuterteSerye hashtag on Twitter. Rodrigo Duterte left his supporters on a cliffhanger the week before October 16 as they waited for the…
NORTH KOREA: Blocking the Doors of Perception
RYAN LIPPERT WRITES – When the state controls the media, what viewers get out of each story depends heavily on whether they live in the country or not. There is no better example of this than North Korea. Earlier this month, North Korea celebrated the 70th anniversary of the ruling Korean…
SOUTH KOREA: Double Diplomatic Parking with Obama
SABRINA VERDUZCO WRITES – The United States and South Korea displayed a new desire to cement a lasting relationship between the two countries on October 16. Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye demonstrated an eagerness to strengthen the US-South Korea alliance on October 16. In a statement from the White…
Qatar: Al Jazeera’s Small Plea for Media Freedom
ALEXIS CRUZ WRITES – The Al Jazeera journalists who were jailed in Egypt are now free and out of the country. Australian Peter Greste was deported in February 2015 and in September his colleagues Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy were finally pardoned by the Egyptian government and released from prison.…
LONDON: Putting a Bit of English Spin on China Policy
(This article appears in the South China Morning Post print editions as Dealing with China) TOM PLATE WRITES – Let us recall that almost two decades ago, a cocky William Jefferson Clinton, then president of a country but two-centuries-plus old, bluntly informed Jiang Zemin that his country, of many millennia,…
AUSTRALIA: Greste Prepares for “Left Off”…of Pardon List
JAMES ROYCE WRITES – Australian Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste may have been freed from Egyptian prison last February, but his name was not present on a list of 100 pardons released by Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi earlier this week. The decision made by President Sisi came a day…
PHILIPPINES: Film Festival Logo Lookalike Gets Two Thumbs Down
MARY GRACE COSTA WRITES – Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but blatant plagiarism is the sign of an uncreative mind. It’s unfortunate, then, that the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) – supposedly a celebration of creative expression through film – has found itself in the embarrassing situation of…
JAPAN: Netflix and Shrug
LEXIE TUCKER WRITES – As of September 2, the citizens of Japan have been able to “Netflix and chill” to their heart’s content. Be that as it may, it looks as though they aren’t really into binge-watching uber popular, original series such as “House of Cards” or “Orange in the…
CHINA: Dreamwriter is a Dream-Killer for Journalists
EMILY ROCHA WRITES – Back in September, a robot called Dreamwriter published a near 1,000 word article in nearly a minute. The business finance report was written in Chinese and entirely understandable, leaving readers to assume it was written by a human. Dreamwriter, developed by “gaming giant” Tencent, has led…
QATAR: Keeping FIFA Happy
ALEXIS CRUZ WRITES – FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the governing body for international soccer, continues to face hard times; Qatar is still dealing with controversy over the World Cup, and it continues to do what it can to defend its bid. The problem is that Qatar cannot control…
NORTH KOREA: A New Hope for Refugees
RYAN LIPPERT WRITES – How is it that a North Korean refugee, who just five years ago did not know what the Internet was, is now learning how to code? Thanks to a new partnership between Coding Dojo and Link (Liberty in North Korea), there is renewed hope that North…
PAKISTAN: When a Profession Costs You Your Life
LAMIYA SHABBIR WRITES – At least four media reporters were shot in less than 24 hours, leaving two dead and two injured. M Ilyas Khan, a reporter for BBC in Islamabad, reports, “Police said the motives behind the shootings were not immediately clear.” On September 9th, Aftab Alam, a former…