Media regulation

Media regulation is the control or guidance of mass media by governments and other bodies. This regulation, via law, rules or procedures, can have various goals, for example intervention to protect a stated "public interest", or encouraging competition and an effective media market, or establishing common technical standards.

The principal targets of media regulation are the press, radio and television, but may also include film, recorded music, cable, satellite, storage and distribution technology (discs, tapes etc.), the internet, mobile phones etc.

These require the balance between rights and obligations. To maintain the contractual balance, society expects the media to take their privilege responsibly. Besides, market forces failed to guarantee the wide range of public opinions and free expression. Intend to the expectation and ensurance, regulation over the media formalized.

At the early period of the modern history of China, the relationship between government and society was extremely unbalanced. Government held power over the Chinese people and controlled the media, making the media highly political.

The economic reform decreased the governing function of media and created a tendency for mass media to stand for the society but not only authority. The previous unbalanced structure between powered government and weak society was loosed by the policy in some level, but not truly changed until the emergence of Internet. At first the regulator did not regard Internet as a category of mass media but a technique of business. Underestimating the power of the internet as a communications tool resulted in a lack of internet regulation. Since then, the internet has changed communication methods, media structure and overthrown the pattern of public voice expression in China.

Regulators have not and would not let the Internet out of control. In recent years, the strategy when approaching the Internet has been to regulate while developing.

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Wikipedia