China's plans to censor the Web

We spent a great deal of the past three weeks learning about the Internet and World Wide Web in a journalism class; but why exactly? The answer, as if any of us don't already know it, is that journalists have a very strong dependancy on the World Wide Web. The Web can serve as a place for a journalist to not only get information, but also to share their own published work. 

All of that being said, it's interesting, among other things, that China plans to censor the Internet and Web usage for foreign journalists during the upcoming Olympic Games being held in Beijing. China regularly censors its citizens and what they can view on the Web, which I have to admit seems bizarre to me, but is it really fair of China to keep foreign workers from doing their job? Especially considering the Olympic Games are organized by ... the International Olympic Committee, which should be able to make the rules and call the shots, rather than the host city having too much control. 

China has been surrounded by a lot of controversies lately, and it seems that this censorship will just become another. Controversies that China hopes to go virtually unnoticed, considering it plans on blocking sites like Amnesty International or any site regarding Tibet. 

It'll be interesting to see if the writing style of the reporters covering the Olympics will change, if the once seemingly unlimited realm of the World Wide Web will soon become very limited for these foreign reporters; limited to sites only regarding the games that they are covering. 

CNN Article

New York Times Article