Chinese Bloggers Stage Hoax 437
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "It seemed like the latest instance of a recurring story: Two Chinese blogs had shut down, apparently the victim of government censorship. 'Within hours, English-language bloggers and Western news media spread the word that the Chinese government had closed the sites,' the Wall Street Journal reports. The BBC spread the word, and its report was picked up by the French free-press group Reporters Without Borders. 'But in this case, it appears the Chinese government wasn't involved, the WSJ reports. 'By Thursday, a day after the shut-downs, the blogs were back up and running. In an interview, Beijing-based journalist Wang Xiaofeng of Massage Milk says he shut his blog down to make a point about freedom of speech -- just one directed at the West instead of at Beijing. He calls the Western press "irresponsible" and says that the hoax was designed "to give foreign media a lesson that Chinese affairs are not always the way you think." ' The BBC later corrected its story."
Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
-Kurt
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
They didn't cry wolf. According to the article, the web page only said
"Due to unavoidable reasons with which everyone is familiar, this blog is temporarily closed."
Crying wolf would be for them to post a message saying the Chinese government shut them down. According to the article, it was the BBC who did a bad job of journalism of blaming the Chinese government without actually asking anyone of the circumstances of the shutdown. He had a very good point in that "They are not just supposed to report based on their own perceptions". They should be reporting based on facts. The BBC had a knee jerk reaction just as the blogger suspected they would.
Let the excuse party begin! (Score:3, Insightful)
It just shows that Western media has a standard agenda of politicizing everything, and that checking sources is not honored by Western journalists (who really should set a good example on this to show Chinese journalists how to do it).
Now the crowd here will come up with ingenious "what ifs" and other excuses, actually defending this bad journalism. It is Us and Them nomatter what, as usual.
The Western Press Ins't Perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
What a bunch of bozos.
Am I pissed at the western press for giving Bush a free pass for so many years, and still showing a suprising lack of backbone even today? You bet. Does that mean the press offers nothing of value (even on those subjects it slants in ways I disagree with)? No.
So a couple of government-friendly bloggers decided to stage a hoax and mimic a shutdown so many bloggers have actually experienced at the hands of that same government, just to draw out the press and discredit their message that "censorship is wrong."
Well, maybe they're congratulating themselves, but I'm not buying their criticism. The press is imperfect, and downright wrong from time to time. Reporters are often lazy, doing more googling and reprinting of press releases than actual research, and courage seems to be lacking from many news organizations (and others appear to be outright owned by supporters of the current conservative regimes in many places, including Australia and the USA).
However, faking a blog shutdown in a way that mimics dozens of real shutdowns, then screaming 'ha ha! fooled you you dumb free speech westerners' is like staging your own kidnapping, hiding out, then going public with how stupid the news media is for reporting your disappearance and possible kidnapping. The media has plenty of faults, but not detecting every case of fraud and deliberate deception is hardly a reason to dismiss every news they report, particularly with respect to repressive regimes.
Hell, if the media were able to detect hoaxes and lies so easilly, Bush, Blair, and their respective administrations would get a whole lot less airtime, and we wouldn't be busy fighting a war in Iraq instead of fighting the War on Terror we were supposed to be fighting in that other country, hundreds of miles to the east
You don't say? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Your Children are in danger of being sexually molested by crazed monkeys in certain areas. News at eleven that you can't afford to miss."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:4, Insightful)
He obviously intended the results he got. So instead of demonstrating anything about "irresponsible" freedom of speech in the West, he managed to demonstrate that his blog is unreliable and that he is, ultimately, irresponsible. Good show.
That's one more small step towards insuring the Chinese will never have to worry about irresponsible freedom of speech in their own country.
The media getting it wrong is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
As a media hoaxer, he really needs to learn a thing or two. There's been some very big media hoaxes over the years, though I can't remember anything recent. Everyone knows the War of the Worlds radio hoax by Orson Wells of course.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Your kind of posts is exactly what they're talking about. There is absolutely no strong evidence that the Chinese government is behind it. But even then, you're already speculating that the government is involved even when they say the government isn't. Your "they're guilty until proven innocent" is exactly the irresponsible behavior they mean.
Yes I'm Chinese. My parents are Chinese. I was born in China. And no we don't live in China.
Yet I still think all the mud throwing at the Chinese government is rediculous. Everybody here's making it sound like China is a hell in which you will be executed if you try to pronounce the 'd' of 'democracy'. China is not North Korea. While I think the Chinese government should be more open, they're not the Big Bad Stalinist Communist Overlords everybody claims they are.
My dad - yes yes he does NOT live in China - has an even stronger opinion than I have. He firmly believes that people are getting paid by the US government to bash the Chinese government. When the Chinese government does something, everybody yells 'OMG those communist bastards are 3v1l!!!'. But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.
Again, just to argue with you conspiracy theorists: NO we don't live in China. The Chinese government isn't forcing me to write this. I live in Europe.
Feigning Death (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's true that these things shouldn't have been reported without some further investigation, but then, who says the BBC didn't do that? Suppose that a blog actually *is* shut down by the Chinese government - do you think that if the local BBC correspondent phones them, they'll say "oh, yes, right, we closed that one in the latest crackdown because it contained words like "democracy" and "falun gong", and the author has been sent to a labour camp for the next ten years"?
I'd expect them to just say "we can't comment on that" - no matter whether the story is actually true or not. After all, what interest does the Chinese government have in having western media report about impingements on human rights (freedom of expression and opinion *is* a human right - look it up)?
I myself have little sympathy for these pranksters. I'm not sure whether they acted out of a misguided sense of patriotism/brainwashing, or whether the whole thing really is a black op to undermine the trust people in western nations place in the media (at least when it comes to reporting about China), but they did lie, and if they should get shut down for real, don't expect too much sympathy from me, either.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
With all due respect, communism is not high on the chart of things that get the benefit of the doubt. Even if the government did not shut down this particular blog, we know from hard evidence that Yahoo! has participated in identifying online dissidents as have other for-profit companies. We know from hard facts that the Chineese government does censor its web content, searches, and traffic, and we do know from hard evidence that they have shut down blogs and sites in the past.
So while I'll give you that news agencies should really do some fact checking before picking up the latest blog chatter and reporting it as real news... It's not that far fetched that the Chinese government would be up to some of their pretty old, tried, and true techniques of squelching any information not explicitly approved for public consumption.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Insightful)
Innocent until proven guilty is a right of the people, not of the government(s).
Re:Yes they are (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
Give me a fucking break. The Chinese government was willing to send FUCKING TANKS against unarmed students. And the Western Media are the bad guys because they assume that the Chinese government is willing to shut down a web site?
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
When China does something, the US complains. When the US does something, everyone in Europe complains. When Europe does something... Well, I guess that's probably the US complaining again. And Russia maybe.
It's the circle of life.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, you're making too much from one paranoid post by one person. China is certainly better than it was during Mao, and it's no Soviet Russia. But it's not a free country either.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
He's not "making a point about freedom of speech" (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not to smart.... (Score:3, Insightful)
If all he made was show that journalism can be sloppy, then what's new here and why even bother? It's hard fact that in today's competition among newspapers, being out with news first is the only thing that counts. This has very little to do with free speech as well, so I don't really know what he's going on about there. Sure, freedom of speech can make people spread false information, but does even harming freedom of speech laws help against that? Hell no!
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
With all due respect, all governments should not be high on the chart of things that get the benefit of the doubt, but that doesn't justify irresponsible reporting.
What if an arab-american blogger posted to his blog saying that he'd been arrested for "reasons that we're all familiar with", and then it turns out he'd been arrested for shoplifting? I'm sure a similar situation would have arisen, and made future articles about US mistreatment of arabs would look more like conspiracy theories than they would have previously.
Yes, it was irresponsible of the bloggers to do what they did (and an obvious attempt to increase readership), but it was also irresponsible for news agencies to report on it without having any facts. It's very tabloidesque.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Even the famous "tank guy" wasn't run over, contrary to popular perception. He stood there for a long time and the tanks held their ground. Eventually he even climbed *on top of the bloody tank* (can you imagine what a US tank gunner would do if someone taking part in a protest that had turned violent climbed on *top* of one of our tanks would do?), and they still didn't shoot him. A person in the crowd freaked out when they saw this, grabbed him and pulled him away from the tanks. Thus ended that standoff.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you tell when a Communist is lying? His lips are moving. And it's perfectly true. Remember what Marxism really is:
Step 1 - Revolt
Step 2 - Appoint a dictator
Step 3 - ???
Step 4 - Communist Utopia
Communism has been responsible for more pain and suffering than any other form of government in the history of men. Even today, let's not forget about the ongoing genocide against the Hmong in Vietnam, or the autogenocide slaughter of 25% of the population by the Khmer Rouge. Let's not forget the 40 million dead during the Great Leap Forward and the 10 million dead during the Cultural Revolition. The illegal war in Korea, and the massacre of 30,000 civilians population in Seoul by the North Koreans and Chinese. Let's not forget the slaughter in Hungary, and the poisoning of the land that the Soviet Union left as a legacy. Or the wholesale slaughter in Afghanistan and the rape of Germany.
The legacy of Communism is death and destruction and the morphing of Communism into a system of fascism in China. Communism has finally failed and become what it was meant to fight. It was always a failure, and was logically flawed. It could not be anything else. The great regret is that fools today refuse to acknowlege this and people still die [nepaleyes.com].
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Falun Gong is a rung away from Scientology on the crazy ladder to spiritual enlightenment.
I don't doubt you're right, though I don't really know much about Falun Gong. It doesn't really matter though, since religious repression is religious opression no matter how crazy the religion is. It's funny you mention Scientology though, since they're involved in trying to squelch criticism of their religion through threatening lawsuits against anyone that is critical of them.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. And to expand up this with regards to questioning the Chinese government's viability, let's apply an extra layer as put forth by the US' founding fathers writings and readings...
"Question your government at all times."
So essentially, assuming the worst of your government, is a duty of its citizens.
Re:ok, now I get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Mostly it isn't left vs. right but just the conclusions they make. AT&T out sources 200 jobs to a tech firm in England [or something] and all of a sudden they're "unamerican". Or there is such a thing as "war on terror" or "civil war in Iraq was inevitable anyways".
You guys really need to headsmack the whole media and stop going for the juicy soundbites which have irrelevant usefulness and actually come to the root of things.
I mean why was Enron so successful for so long? Was the media really looking that hard?
Why is Cheney not in prison? What exactly is a "hunting accident" anyways?
etc, etc.
You guys seem to skim over the real issues when they're new and juicy then just give up on them.
Tom
So-called "point" about free speech. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, yep. Something that frustrates me when I look at US college campuses are all these Falun Gong groups. And people openly doing Falun Gong meditation. It's one thing to denounce a government for oppression (that's fine). But it's another to embrace this kooky idea as a result; I am willing to wager that if these people had found out about Falun Gong and if the Chinese government didn't try to shut it down, they wouldn't be practicing it.
The Chinese government was right about one thing: FG is crazy and cult-like. But that does not justify suppressing it, and *that* is where they went wrong.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you could choose to hear and understand the argument being made that people immediately jump to conclusions as far as the Chinese government is concerned, and that doing so is irresponsible. The awareness of that point was the purpose of the action, and the message that is supposed to be taken from it. What the Chinese government did in the past or what they may do in the future is irrelvant to the purpose of the story.
The re-iteration of your viewpoint, regardless of facts which have nothing to do with it, brings up an interesting memory of mine. There's an important idea I learned while studying the history of science in collage.
ALL scientific truths go through exactly three phases.
I find this applies to almost everything people believe. We reach some point where we accept certain things as being set in stone. Then what happens is we refuse to accept any new information which disrupts what we believe. The unfortunately thing in doing so is we waste years applying the wrong information, when such a struggle was unnecessary.
Teach yourself to be able to accept evidence which may contradict your current viewpoint, no matter how strongly you believe in it. The world is full of polarity. Just because there is evidence to the contrary of what you believe doesn't mean you have to change your belief. But be open to doing so if the evidence should prove overwhelming.
Getting back to the current issue, the point to take is that automatically damning ANYTHING is a bad idea. Don't accuse people of evil before they actually do it. As the US should have learned from the post 9/11 hell-hole that is Iraq, demonizing people just makes them hate you more. It doesn't solve any problem.
Re:Those who speak out against Bush (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
So I have no problem believing that the Communist government of China would force anyone into saying something. I also have no trouble believing that this group and this farce was supported by the State.
All the hubbub is not mudslinging. It's fact. Ask a Tibetian about how benign this government is. Ask the Heroes of Tiananmen Square Democracy movement how distressing it is that the State is getting a bad rap.
And your point about evil government: Yes, the Communist government of China is systematically evil. The Democratic government of the USA is far from perfect and has had a checkered past. But the bottom line the US's past behavior does not lessen the crimes commited against millions by the Communist government of China.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
When I think Russia, I think a country which has done a phenominal job dealing with a bad economy and working with the rest of the world to mend ties while it has in the meantime built up much of its old government control without of socio-fascist front.
When I think China, I think a country that is aiming to directly take on the US economy and dollar, and allows most activities within the country as long as it isn't disruptive to the function of their government.
And even if your heavy handed characterizations were correct, how is that any different than the view that all americans are cowboy, gun-slingin' tourists who are convinced of their own superiority of "culture", not withstanding the fact that American culture IS other cultures.
I'm tired of this Anglo-American, spoiled media views are wrong bullshit. As soon as you realize that the American media doesn't represent the American public, then you can chastize me for "generalizing".
Re:America (Score:4, Insightful)
Big difference between slaves who died 150-300 years ago, and protesters who died less than twenty years ago.
Infanticide? A lot of people would call aborton exactly that, so you're not off the hook there either.Yeah, I agree that it's wrong--but at least we're not forcing people to do that, as they do in China.
Not to mention dumpster babies, which America has had more than a few of.
A statistically insignificant number--and again, not the result of official coercion.
Many forced sterilisations back around the beginning of the twentieth century, and lots of Americans who think that we should bring back that kind of eugenics.
That was a long time ago.
Executing convicts? At least China doesn't execute children and the mentally incompetent. Oh wait, America finally bannd executing the mentally incompetent, although children are still fair game.
I don't believe that a child has been executed in the US in well over a century--possibly ever. We have executed adults who committed crimes as teenagers, which strikes me as perfectly decent: a 17 year old who rapes and murders is just as deserving of punishment as he would be if he'd waited a week.
And the idiots in the Supreme Court outlawed the practise anyway last year, in clear contravention of precedent and the plain meaning of the Constitution.
Also, AFAIK China does this still...
Censorship? Obviously you haven't been paying attention to the Republican's latest attempt to stop the media from revealing their crimes.
You're begging the question: was there a crime? There's a lot of very strong evidence that there was not. The laws in question would merely prevent publishing legitimate secrets, which is no big deal at all.
And the constant threats against Iran ...
You mean the rogue state lead by a lunatic who worships an imam in a well and who threatens to wipe Israel from the map? You think we shouldn't try to keep them in line?
Don't dupe yourself -- America is a fascist state, and has been for some time now.
Don't kid yourself--America is nowhere near being a fascist state. Look, I disagree with a lot of what our State does (I'm a right-libertarian), but we are far, far from a regime like Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's or even Gorbachev's.
And in any case, your objections are irrelevant: even were we as bad as you think, that would not make the Chinese any better in an absolute sense.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Insightful)
I am not trying to start a flame war here, but this idea that any entity - person, government, etc., will just suddenly turn heel and become the complete opposite of what they've been for years, without some outside force acting upon it, is rediculous. Further, when you look at the weight and size of something like the government of China, you have a giant, almost immovable object to which change only comes in one of two ways - painfully slowly, or with bloody revolution.
Don't accuse people of evil before they actually do it.
Which brings me to my point - the government of China has proven themselves evil time and time again. The assumption that "hey, perhaps this time they're ok" is a dangerous precident that seems to have been set sometime recently. It's like the idea that Iraq will just suddenly, one day accept democracy as the US lays it out... as nice as it may sound, it's not going to happen.
I do continue to be dissapointed in the media outlets that take any blog posting as fact. But if I were a reporter, I'd certainly start investigating with the assumption that the Chinese government had indeed stepped in, and then try to disprove a theory which more often than not, will be correct.
If you want to speak of truths, one is that an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force - and this goes for the movement of a communist, repressive government the same that it goes for giant masses of matter floating in space.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Insightful)
My dad - yes yes he does NOT live in China - has an even stronger opinion than I have. He firmly believes that people are getting paid by the US government to bash the Chinese government. When the Chinese government does something, everybody yells 'OMG those communist bastards are 3v1l!!!'. But when the US government does something, almost nobody says a word.
In China people actually do get paid to write bad things about the American, Tawianese and Japanese government. Admittedly, they don't make up stories as a pure propagandist would, but they do exagerate them in exactly the manner you complain of - Not to excuse US reporters who employ this tactic.
Take the gigantic nationalistic protests against Japan. Spurred mostly by inflated or outright false reports concerning two textbooks published by a private company used in at most a handful of school districts. These textbooks were in no way ever endorsed by the Japanese government or supported by the majority of the Japanese populace. The chearleaders of these textbooks are the same in proportion to Neo Nazis in Germany.
Why would the Chinese government want to add fuel to this fire you ask? Because it gave them ammo to deny Japan on a cherished seat on the UN security council. [indiadaily.com] At the same time China supports Germany's (ever heard of the holocaust?) bid for a seat on the security council... something doesn't add up
Re:Serious Question (Score:3, Insightful)