Caixin Report Provides Context for Baidu's 2011 Censorship of Search Resutls for "CCTV Baidu"

On August 15, 2011, China's state-run television broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) launched the first in a series of critical reports about Baidu. As described in an August 18 report on the state-sponsored China.org.cn website:

Over the past few days, CCTV has broadcast a series of reports showing Baidu helped unlicensed pharmaceutical companies circumvent government regulations to appear at the top of its search results.
CCTV has also criticized "slanderous posts" by Internet users on the company's Tieba forums, which Baidu has allegedly refused to delete.

Within days of CCTV’s reports, Baidu (and only Baidu) began censoring results for "CCTV Baidu" (both "CCTV 百度" and "央视 百度"). The screenshots below were taken on August 21, 2011, and show that at that time searches for these terms on Baidu web search and news search returned a notice saying "Search results may not comply with relevant laws, regulations, and policies, and have not been displayed" (搜索结果可能不符合相关法律法规和政策，未予显示。).

On June 1, 2014, the state-sponsored China Daily published a report entitled “CCTV Exec Suspected of Bribery: Procuratorate.” According to that report: “The two suspects are Guo Zhenxi, director-general of CCTV finance and economics channel and advertising director concurrently, and Tian Liwu, a producer of the channel.”

On June 16, 2014, the state-sponsored Caixin Magazine published a report entitled “A Peace Offering From CCTV’s ‘Big Boss’ Guo Zhenxi” (央视“大管家”郭振玺折戟). Some excerpts:

In August 2011, for four days several CCTV programs including "Economy Half-Hour," "Economics and Law," and "Economic Information Broadcast" saw a tectonic shift in their programming, launching verbal attacks about a flood of fake information on Baidu search that led to consumers being misled and suffering financial losses. This continuous stream of reports led the public to doubt Baidu's impartiality and business ethics, and caused Baidu's stock price to drop.

The consensus has been that the cause of that concentrated media bombardment was bad blood between Guo Zhenxi and Baidu. But a former CCTV employee has confirmed to Caixin that it was not Guo who initiated the affair. This source says that the four-day's of continuous reports was not some plot of the economic programs, but rather came about as a result of a document from the "National Leading Group on Rectifying and Regulating Market Economic Order," and that the primary goal was to regulate Internet order, which was growing more chaotic by the day. But what surprised him was that, after submitting what he originally took to be just another report, it would broadcast in such an "explosive" format.

A source at CCTV told Caixin that internally it was said that prior to this Guo had harbored a grudge against Baidu. It related to an incident where the Internet was plastered with reports and posts about quality problems with a certain company's pork products. This company sought out Guo, and paid him to help out. Guo personally approached Baidu, hoping to comprehensively block relevant posts from Baidu search. Baidu tactfully declined.

A website operator has confirmed to Caixin that Guo did in fact use his personal influence to appoach major websites to delete posts on behalf of certain companies, and that he had helped people who were friends of his programs' hosts to make calls to websites to delete posts.

2011年8月，央视财经频道《经济半小时》《经济与法》和《经济信息联播》等栏目，连续四天打破正常节目的板块划分，炮轰百度搜索虚假信息泛滥，导致消费者上当受骗导致财务损失。这些持续报道引发了公众对百度公正性与商业道德的质疑，并导致百度股价下跌。
　　
舆论普遍认为，此次新闻炮轰或缘于郭振玺与百度的交恶。但一位已离职的前央视员工则向财新记者确认，郭振玺并非此次事件的第一推手。这位人士说，当时连续四天的报道并非由财经频道自己策划，而是来自“全国整顿和规范市场经济秩序领导小组”的命题作文，主要目的是为了规范日趋混乱的网络秩序。不过令他也吃惊的是，原本仅仅当作一档日常工作来对待的报道成片提交后，竟会以如此形式“轰炸”播出。
　　
据一位央视员工向财新记者透露，内部有一种说法是，郭振玺此前确实与百度有隙。涉及某企业火腿肠质量问题的报道和帖子在网上铺天盖地，该企业找到郭振玺，花钱请他帮忙。郭亲自找到百度，希望在百度搜索上全面遮蔽相关帖子，遭到婉拒。
　　
一位网站人士也向财新记者证实，郭振玺确实经常利用自己的影响力，替一些企业找各大网站删帖，他还曾帮助一些与其相熟的主持人给网站打招呼删帖。