Update to Bloomberg/China Censorship Controversy
December 1, 2013
New information on Bloomberg’s problems with political and self-censorhip in China have arisen, special as to how Bloomberg works to navigate Chinese media regulations.
Bloomberg, which has had trouble reporting in China for the last few years, apparently works to render politically touchy articles invisible in the country with a special code.
According to the New York Times, “Code 204” has been in place for over two years, and works to limit the availability of news in China to financial data and news. As the original article pointed out, this is only another complication to the company’s stance in China; Bloomberg not only is a content creator in China but a distributor as well.
Like Bloomberg’s decision not to publish the year-old investigation in China, the code has upset their reporters but been vehemently defended by their editorial staff.