Censorship in China in the context of "Human rights in Tibet"

Media bias occurs when journalists and news producers show bias in how they report and cover news. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening of the standards of journalism, rather than the perspective of an individual journalist or article. The direction and degree of media bias in various countries is widely disputed.

Practical limitations to media neutrality include the inability of journalists to report all available stories and facts, and the requirement that selected facts be linked into a coherent narrative. Government influence, including overt and covert censorship, biases the media in some countries, for example China, North Korea, Syria and Myanmar. Politics and media bias may interact with each other; the media has the ability to influence politicians, and politicians may have the power to influence the media. This can change the distribution of power in society. Market forces may also cause bias. Examples include bias introduced by the ownership of media, including a concentration of media ownership, the subjective selection of staff, or the perceived preferences of an intended audience.

Baidu Baike (/ˈbaɪduː ˈbaɪkə/; Chinese: 百度百科; pinyin: Bǎidù Bǎikē; lit. 'Baidu Encyclopedia', also known as Baidu Wiki) is a semi-regulated Chinese-language collaborative online encyclopedia owned by the Chinese technology company Baidu. Modelled after Wikipedia, it was launched on 21 April 2008. As of 2024, it claims more than 27 million entries and 7.7 million editors — the largest number of entries of any Chinese-language online encyclopedia. Baidu Baike has been criticised for its censorship, copyright violations, commercialist practices and unsourced or inaccurate information.

Internal media of China enables high-level Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres to access information that is subject of censorship in China for the general public.

As He Qinglian documents in chapter 4 of Media Control in China, there are many grades and types of internal documents (Chinese: 内部文件; pinyin: nèibù wénjiàn). Many are restricted to a certain administrative level – such as county level, provincial level or down to certain official levels in a ministry. Some Chinese journalists, including Xinhua correspondents in foreign countries, write for both the mass media and the internal media.

The 2019–2020 COVID-19 outbreak in mainland China was the first COVID-19 outbreak in that country, and the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). China was the first country to experience an outbreak of the disease, the first to impose drastic measures in response (including lockdowns and face mask mandates), and one of the first countries to bring the outbreak under control.

The outbreak was first manifested as a cluster of mysterious pneumonia cases, mostly related to the Huanan Seafood Market, in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. On 8 January 2020, a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) was identified as the cause of the pneumonia by Chinese scientists. During the beginning of the pandemic, the Chinese government showed a pattern of secrecy and top-down control. It censored discussions about the outbreak since the beginning of its spread, from as early as 1 January, worked to censor and counter reporting and criticism about the crisis – which included the detention of several citizen journalists – and portray the official response to the outbreak in a positive light, and restricted and facilitated investigations probing the origins of COVID-19. Several commentators suspected the Chinese government had deliberately under-reported the extent of infections and deaths. However, some academic studies have found no evidence that China manipulates COVID-19 data.