After a small tempest in tbe media tea pot erupted this past week, President Hu Jintao today announced that foreign reporters covering the Olympics in Beijing would have unrestricted access to the internet. The glorious moment came only after BOCOG and members of the IOC publicly greased up the backside of IOC spokesman Kevan Gosper, changing the policy from ‘unrestricted access’ to ‘access sufficient to cover the games’ (and after the Wall Street Journal attempted to play ‘Gotcha’ with Sun Weide by demonstrating the lack of access at the new Olympic Media Center in the middle of a press conference).
All of which ignores the larger issue”: that the internet remains under tight control here in the PRC. If Hu came out and unblocked the internet for the whole country, then I would be impressed. As for this…meh.