It might be a shock, but anchors yawn!

We need a break from the back-and-forth on Tibet arguments. Here is a nice one.

An anchor of CCTV-1, the major and official TV station in China, Wen Jing was caught yawning on air. She swallowed the second half yawn and tossed to a reporter shortly after she realized the camera was still on her.

This video stirs a hot debate among Web forums. Some people blame the anchor is obviously not professional, and they concern the overall quality of the station and eventually the credibility of the whole media industry. Other people agree that it was understandable because "anchors are also human"

Two other awkward moments that happened earlier in CCTV were dig out soon by sharp netizen. A anchor was caught applying her make-up in an evening show, and a sport anchor was wearing shorts below his tidy suit when he was reporting.

I have seen the similar things happened here in news 10. Anchors apply make-up, wear flipflop, or yawn behind the science. They know exactly when they were on or off the camera, although my heart was in my throat during the whole shows!

Another funny thing is the staff were talking to themselves and laughing, while they were actually chatting and joking with each other through earphones.

I am glad to see there are more people showing their tolerance and sympathy to Wen Jing. The less they care about the official "costumes", the less they would be influenced from the propaganda, at least in the case of China.

China needs freedom for whatever reasons

My friend Jean, who lives in China, left a comment on my blog.

That is exciting news because my blog, together with tons of other bloggers' in Blogspot, had been blocked by Chinese government for almost a year, the longest period that the Chinese government has blocked connection from the Western world via the Internet.

Beginning April 1, the English versions of Wikipedia, YouTube and Blogspot, have been made accessible to people in China again, although thousands of websites including the vast majority of foreign-based news sites in Chinese are still blocked.

This could be attributed to at least two reasons:

First and the most likely reason -- the Olympics. The Chinese government has been counting down to the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympic on August 8 to demonstrate to the world that China is no longer a locked-up recluse but a dynamic, confident giant. Since human rights in China has been a most criticized topic for a long time, China might want to establish a new image in media, by allowing the access to several controversial Web sites.

Secondly, the Tibet issue. Ever since the very beginning of reporting on it, western media have been predictably stood against "Communist China" in the rift between the Dalai lama, the people in Tibet and the Chinese government. No matter whether the media are automatically inclined to align with the Tibetans, it is not realistic to believe every single report negative to China can be correct. Several news pictures about Tibet protests being pushed by police in Nepal that happened earlier were mistakenly blamed on the Chinese police. This ironic mistake is being used widely by Chinese official reporting to accuse "biased western media" of often "fabricating news". This led to a national questioning attitude on the objectivity of western reporting among China. Chinese government then found they could be ironically benefited from the "biased reporting" from the western media.

In whatever reasons, this is a big step forward in Internet freedom in China. I am more than 7,000 miles from home. It was good to be able to hear from my friend Jean on my blog. The only thing that I can do now is cross my fingers and hope it won't be blocked again.

"I can do it" is always harder than "I think I can do it"

I have been observing editing videos for a long while, and even have been beyond the passion to actually make one to be used in a real news, after being frustrated to know no intern's work would be adopted, officially.

But apparently I overlooked the "grey" interpretation of the policy. Therefore, after insisting a million times, I finally got a chance to edit videos for a real news today! Well, I should clarify it was only for bumps and IDS, like teases, but still, I made it!

Then, it came to the practical application part, which is always harder than what I thought. All the tiny tricky problems that I would never anticipate in my imagination popped up. This reminds me the math exams in high school. I hate math, like most of journalism major dudes do. No matter how much prepared I felt after reading all the sample questions in the textbook, without actually solving a problem, I would always be defeated by some tiny tricky problems that never happened in my mind-solving process.

Ok, depressed so that I almost forgot the point for today: the first time I finally contribute to a real news here. Cheers!