internet - The clash of cultures, the BBC talks back

Earlier this month some of China's more famous bloggers started to complain about how they were treated by the BBC and objected against the way they were questioned. Especially the one-sided way they were always and only asked about censorship on the internet in China annoyed for example Wang Jianshuo. Fortunately, the BBC is one of few traditional media who are getting familiar with the new media and yesterday they actually started to reply.
As a professional fence-sitter I can only appreciate that, although I do not see both sides getting much closer either.
Lets have a closer look at what I think both sides might be doing wrong in the eyes of the others. What most certainly did not help the 'Chinese' viewpoint is the fact that first bloggers complain western media only ask them about censorship and then refuse to discuss why that is a big problem as the Western media suggest. By doing so it only adds to this mystic feelings there is a big secret in the Chinese internet where people are afraid to talk about.
So asks Alan Connor on behave of the BBC:

So how can this be? Is the BBC (gulp) fallible, not to mention Amnesty, PoliticsOnline, openDemocracy and Reporters Sans Frontieres, which named China the winner of the 2005 Internet-Censor World Championship?

That is a very justified question to ask for somebody who is looking at Chinese from a Western media mindset and you cannot just deal with that issue by publicly ignoring it. I know that it is easier for me as a fence-sitter to discuss those issues, but it would help if more bloggers would explain what censorship really means for them. You cannot deal with what your preceive as wrong perceptions without actually dealing with them.
Much of the Chinese complaints are - as Alan Connor and others explain - standard journalistic procedures. You mostly do not publish whole interviews, journalists make their own picks. When you want to convince the 'British' side there is more to the Chinese internet, it helps to push those issues. I agree with the 'Chinese' complaints that so many interesting issues are just overrun by the censorship question only. How the internet is changing traditional media. How life of internet users is changing dramatically. How the divisions between different groups of active internet users influence the domestic discussion. Just a few of many interesting issues.
Yes, Western journalists can be tough, also when they deal with their own governments, some Chinese bloggers noted with disgust. That is something bloggers simply have to get used to: there is no reason why they should get a special treatment. They should deal with realities too.

Update: More clashes here. (A tip by Bingfeng Teahouse.)