The Cost of Censoring Negative Publicity
China continuously seems to be putting themselves in the bull’s eye these days because of its love affair with Internet censorship. The latest fiasco, reported by TheWest.com.au, is that a public relations company representing the Chinese milk-producing company, Sanlu, asked China’s largest search engine, Baidu, to block any negative publicity about milk that’s been tainted. That’s called CENSORSHIP. And they didn’t ask once, but twice.
To sweeten the pot, the company made a deal to buy advertising from this search engine to the tune of $640,000, as long as they continued to censor anything negative about the milk scandal. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. Thousands of young children being hospitalized with kidney illness after drinking watered-down milk boosted with “melamine’ to give it more protein. Four infants died. This stuff is 66% Nitrogen and flame retardant. It can be turned into glue, plastic and other products. It contains no nutritional value whatsoever. Unfortunately, it is commonly used to hide low protein levels in products.
Sanlu isn’t producing milk any longer, but it still tried to pay off Baidu to hide what it did. You have to remember that Baidu follows Chinese Internet laws and censors content it is supposed to by regulation, so it does engage in such activities. Still, it’s bad enough Sanlu watered down its product to make a larger profit at the expense of children’s health, but to add melamine to cover it up is insane. It’s common knowledge that the ingredient causes kidney stones and renal failure. And they used a cheaper grade of melamine to save more money, the grade that can contain ammonia and urea. If you’re going to poison a nation at least use a top-notch toxin.
