China's media reform: where to go?

Jie Lin's article provided insight into the current state of media in China. The concept that most surprised me was the degree of freedom that China's media exercises. I was taken aback that China's government does not play a significant role in directly guiding the content and editorial tone of major Chinese newspapers. The financial aspect makes sense and was something I had never considered. Interestingly, that's a topic I don't think it is a topic that the American mainstream media has explored, either.

The amount of self-censorship by Chinese journalists makes sense, given the amount of freedom granted to journalists by the Chinese government. The vastness of that self-censorship was still surprising to me, in that the censorship covered a wide range of issues. Again, this is a topic that the mainstream American media do not really touch upon. I think we are fed this image of a communist media monster indoctrinating its people, which doesn't really seem to be the case...somewhat.