ASIA MEDIA INTERNATIONAL RECENTLY RECEIVED THIS ANNOUNCEMENT — THE ECONOMIST is looking for a journalist with a good knowledge of China and of standard Chinese, and who is keen to be posted in Beijing or elsewhere outside the UK, to help with our coverage of foreign affairs. Salary negotiable. Applicants…
TOM PLATE WRITES – Begin with the unpretentious wisdom of the late Yogi Berra, a notably inarticulate Hall of Fame baseball player celebrated for memorable ‘Yogi-isms’: “It’s tough to make predictions,” one went, “especially about the future.” But the wish for the better can parent premature thoughts; the caring media…
LEXIE TUCKER WRITES – In a piece from The Japan Times, Columbia University’s Gerald Curtis states that, “the [Japanese] government doesn’t have to muzzle the press if the press takes it upon itself to do the muzzling.” Shigeaki Koga, an ex-bureaucrat at Japan’s Ministry of the Economy, wants to tear…
YVONNE EPPS WRITES— Vietnam has come a long way since the start of the year. We’ve seen major progress with the acceptance of social media and dips with press freedom, but the road is still jagged and, if they don’t watch their step, they might end up hurt. The Economist reported…
ELIZABETH NA’AI WRITES – Thailand’s military junta is crafting an Orwellian state. Junta leader and self-imposed Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha declared those who cross the lèse majesté line, or espouse anti-junta political dissent will be punished to the fullest extent of the law. The National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO)…
STEPHANIE GARCIA WRITES – It has been said “imitation is the highest form of flattery.” Perhaps stalking is second highest? And the new frontier seems to be taking place on the cyber highways. Sure, stalkers may be a problem that has existed since the dawn of civilization, but Web avenues…
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – The worst disaster to hit Bangladesh’s garment industry happened on Wednesday, April 24th with a death toll of 344 and counting. The media regarding Bangladesh is dominated by this story and rightly so. With unapproved construction of parts of the garment factory and ignored warnings of…
YVONNE EPPS WRITES – The United States prides itself on being “number one” in most areas, but it seems that social culture is its main point of interest to outsiders nowadays. A quick search on the Vietnamese language version of ThanhNien News Network reveals that American social reporting seems to…
Both the passage of time and the ushering in of new leaders have proven to be fruitless in the alleviation of the tension felt in East Asia. It may be well into the new year, but the ties between Japan and China continue to exhibit signs of deterioration thanks to…
A new proposal from Bangladesh to make counterfeiting money punishable by the death penalty has alarmed the German Bundensbank (German Central Bank) who originally offered to assist Bangladesh in detecting counterfeit money. The Economist reports that Bangladesh, plagued with more than 5,000 pending cases regarding currency counterfeiting, is scheduled to…
Sometimes in Vietnam it pays to keep your mouth (or blog) shut. Last month, a Vietnamese court sentenced three bloggers to between 4 and 12 years in prison for allegedly troubling citizens and trying to overthrow the Communist government. You’d think with debt scandals, a slowing economy and inflation expected…
The Following Syndicated Column Is Reprinted from The Jakarta Post of Indonesia: One way or the other, a magazine needs to stand for something special — otherwise, who cares? As a once-young journalist I took in this maxim of magazining from the late Clay Felker, who in the seventies pushed…
While anti-Japanese sentiments continue to brew across China due to the unseemly scrum over the Senkaku, called the Diaoyu by the Chinese, islands, some celebrities in the region have spoken out against the tension. Notable amongst them is Sora Aoi, a former Japanese pornography actress, who has helped China, or…
The Bangladesh government is unhappy with The Economist, the famed international weekly published out of London. More specifically, Bangladesh’s government seems to believe that The Economist has not practiced accurate or impartial reporting on two recent feature articles on Bangladesh, titled “Banged about” and “Hello, Delhi”. On June 14th, 2012,…
The Western news media – and especially The Economist Magazine of London – have been almost incautiously optimistic about recent diplomatic developments coming out of North Korea. But the media in South Korea has been rather cautious about Pyongyang’s latest pitch to suspend parts of its nuclear program, to allow…
