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."
BBC (Score:5, Interesting)
Who is actually irresponsible? (Score:5, Interesting)
This makes it sound like all the major news outlets were up in arms about it. In fact, a quick check of Google news for "Massage Milk", sorted by date, shows that there was the BBC story on the 8th, then numerous reports about it being a hoax the next day.
The BBC article states:
(Emphasis mine.)
The WSJ article claims that the BBC updated its article, but it doesn't make clear what was updated. The few blogs that picked up the story seem to support the text I quoted above. Meaning, that the BBC was not unreasonable in its report, even if it did assume the worst.
As far as I can tell, the only irresponsible party here is the blogger himself. He created a situation that directly insinutated government shutdown, then tried to play the matter up as "irresponsible western journalism." He's proved nothing except to do damage to the free speech movement in China.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Interesting)
*adjusts tinfoil hat*
Kind of silly in my opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, maybe I am an idiot, but I would rather have a (relatively) free press who get things wrong from time to time to a govt. which muzzles just about everything. Call me crazy I suppose. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese govt. backed this project in the first place.
Free To Be Irresponsible (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Interesting)
But it also makes you wonder if reporters these days actually have reliable sources - and if they even bother to verify them. I'm tipping this is a classic example of a big "NO" on both accounts.
I wonder how much other news is in this catagory?
Yes they are (Score:5, Interesting)
Chinese affairs are not always the way you think
This is bullshit. Respect of the human dignity and free will of a Chineese person is just as important as the respect of human dignity and free will of an American one. The notion that rights are opinions and mutual agreements worked out with a government died over 200 years ago. Today it is widely understood that individuals have rights with or without government, and that those rights are inaliable, and that the puspose of government is to help secure those rights. If the government can't do it, then it is a failure - plain and simple. This isn't rocket science, the history of rights has been well tested out and is only misunderstood by those who would want to ignore it and abuse it.
I've been doing this for years... (Score:0, Interesting)
Without getting into details, my group has managed to put several fabricated stories on the wire, prompted an editorial on a major news network, and I personally have been quoted as an "unnamed source in the government" by a major newspaper.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Interesting)
Who exactly did this heart/teach anything to?
Not to smart.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah right. The guy intentionally feeds incorrect information to the outside world, then blames everyone for interpreting it incorrectly? Great logic skills, buddy.
Given his statement, apparently all of those censorship and freedom of speech problems don't exist. Move along, nothing to see here.
Re:Who is actually irresponsible? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which leaves the reporter in a dilemma: report the facts as literally observed, and miss a scoop, or go ahead and read between the lines... and be played like trollmeat.
"He chose...poorly." - Grail Guardian, Indiana Jones: Last Crusade
I like the old net mantra for this. "YHBT. YHL. HAND." [catb.org]
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, this suggests caring very much, about the quality of reporting. In this case, a knee jerk reaction was prompoted without seeking to even partially clarify facts. Western media don't so much care for these sources of information, rather than making a quick story possibly already draft written/outlined.
My field is finance/economics, but I'd say this is the exact same way Western media reports financial affaris - make some widely perpetuated assumptions from afar no matter how much missing the point (or reaching any basic level of understanding) - and end up in a catcxhy but wholly inaccurate article. And I'm talking 'serious' press here, Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. Having a little basis in fact (which is not so easy to obtain in the PRC due to many data quality issues) is often overlooked by Western media. Extrapolation of 10 year old fact heavily mixed with opinion makes front pages oh so easily.
Posted from within the PRC by someone quite amazed by the differences of actuality and his prior supposition.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:1, Interesting)
Its probably the same agency that was paying journalists to say good things about the US in nations that didn't like us -- as well as big name journalists in this country to promote adjendas that suited the administration. As this has been proven, it isn't a hard jump to assume we are paying folks to spread propoganda about China (not that they need any more than is already out there).
Nah...that would be too easy.
Note: I wouldn't want to live in any other country than the US -- I just think its easier for politicians and leaders to subvert the principles of the nation than to actually explain whats going on in a logical fashion some times.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe internet censorship isn't as bad as we make it out to be in China, maybe it is... but it's not fair to the people who are dying by the government's hand to gloss over the atrocities committed by the Chinese government.
I don't think that the Chinese government is pure evil, but it certainly is not very nice if you're not one of the right people. It's foolish for Western journalists to jump on a story like this and assume that the government was behind it, but it's just as foolish to assume that just because the West overreacts about something in China, there is nothing actually there to be infuriated about.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Interesting)
It was also both officially and unofficially endorsed [wikipedia.org] by the Chinese government. Then at some point they changed their minds (likely because it was becomes too powerful of a religion), and started a disinformation campaign against them.
I'm not a supporter of Falun Gong, but I have known a few practitioners who have escaped China. They are certainly no Church of Scientology, and they definitely don't represent such a significant threat that the Chinese government ignores its own constitution [intelligentblogger.com] to persecute them.
I've had quite a few Chinese coworkers and friends. I also have a high respect for the Chinese people and much of their culture. But I spit on the farce they call a "government of the people." It's a government of selfish power that attempts to subvert the thinking of the common person into believing that such subjigation is what they want.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
In 2000 I got together with a guy I know who spent several years in China, and met his wife, a Chinese woman he met in Beijing, and who came back to the States with him. As it happened, that day I had been walking through Copley Square in Boston and had seen a large group of Chinese people doing what looked like tai chi set to music. It turned out they were practicioners of falun gong, a kind of qigong.
I knew nothing about falun gong, and my friend explained that they were a spiritualist movement that was outlawed in China in 1999 after they became politicized and demonstrated in favor of democracy. His wife added, very sincerely, that they had really been outlawed because they were all very bad people. "They kill their parents!"
She wasn't uneducated or anything--she was an intelligent woman--but she had simply accepted the official version of the news and it hadn't occurred to her to doubt it. She also thought that the Tibetans were glad to have the Chinese occupying their country ("We're nice to them, we give them rice.")
I found that an eye-opening experience. It certainly made me ask, "Wait a minute, where are my blind spots? How much of what I believe is actually total bullshit?"
It seems to me that many people never perform that kind of self-checking, either through laziness or because they find it threatening. I also think that when you ask a question that makes someone angry, it's because you're questioning something they believe on faith and have neither evidence nor logic to support it (completely regardless of whether it's true or not.)
America (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't dupe yourself -- America is a fascist state, and has been for some time now. It probably started around Clinton's time, although Dubya has worked hard to try and outdo him.
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
Serious Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Serious questions not meant as flamebait:
In which country do you now live?
Why does your family no longer live in China?
Wang Xiaofeng did NOT cry wolf (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:4, Interesting)
How many Marxists does it take to change a lightbulb? None. The staff at the library change them.
Bakunin, a contemporary of Marx, correctly predicted the failures of the Soviet Union and Maoism.
>Communism has been responsible for more pain and suffering than any other form of government in the history of men.
The breakup of Africa was done by the colonial powers, the destabilization of China was done by the British. The wholesale slaughter of 'native' North Americans was done by mother nature with a helping hand from the Europeans. The slaughter of the indians in Guatemala was bought and paid for by United Fruit Company. Not to defend the Stalinist scumbags (or insane Maoists), but history has enough blood to go around. Ronald Reagan, for instance, sent death squads into Central America to rape nuns. And he was fighting 'Communism'.
Don't bring nepal into this (Score:3, Interesting)
Furthermore, the death toll analysis is not very reliable. For example, much of the death in the GLF was from incompetence and lack of control, rather than authoritarian actions. The Cultural Revolution, meanwhile, was not a centrally organised disaster, but of self igniting fanaticism. And so on and so forth.
While it is easy to make such lists, it is more valuable to look at what connects them - and what connects them has little to do with communism itself - Marx never espoused a dictatorship. What made these cases arise is the raising to high station of an insignificant, paranoid peasant warlord, who becomes obsessed with delusions of self-grandeur. The above sort of thing is not restricted to communism, but occurs in any case where a hated government is removed suddenly by a rebel movement, which then finds itself surrounded by external enemies and half-imagined, half-real remnants of the deposed force. Non-communist examples involve the Taliban, Nazi Germany, the Rwandan massacres, post-Soviet Russia, Saddam-era Iraq......