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Chinese Bloggers Stage Hoax
Posted by
Zonk
on Tue Mar 14, 2006 11:21 AM
from the riling-up-the-world dept.
from the riling-up-the-world dept.
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."
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Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
-Kurt
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Interesting)
*adjusts tinfoil hat*
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:4, Funny)
Kidding
Parent
Re:Serious Question (Score:4, Informative)
Netherlands.
For work. My dad came here because China was poor at the time (the late 1980s). I and my mother followed a few years later.
See? No conspiracies.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Funny)
You must be new here.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Funny)
If he ever finds the agency paying these people to bash China (or any country) tell him to let me know.. Not that I have anything against China I just could use the money.
Thanks
Eric
Parent
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 t
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'.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Those who speak out against Bush (Score:5, Informative)
Basically she wrote a letter to the editor identifying her job and then proceeded to publicly blast her employer as an employee. In the private sector, that'd probably get her fired. As a government employee, that's virtually impossible, so instead her bosses in the bureaucracy (who now look really bad to their bosses) are trying to make her life a little more miserable.
While I don't condone the screwed-up nature of the federal civil service bureaucracy, imagine the internal response if you had published a letter to the editor saying the CEO of your company was mismanaging several big aspects of the company and signed it with your name and job title. I'm pretty sure the response you'd get (if you worked at a large or small company) would dwarf the response she got from her bosses.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:5, Funny)
> *adjusts tinfoil hat*
And on the third hand, how do we know they weren't working for the Chinese government all along, as part of a psyops plan to discredit Chinese bloggers who oppose the government?
*adjusts tinfoil hat with fourth hand and requests immediate beamout; the humans are onto me for some reason!*
Parent
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?
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:Boys who cried wolf (Score:3, Interesting)
Who exactly did this heart/teach anything to?
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 af
China? (Score:3, Funny)
But who knew that the 7th most popular non adult web search in China is Plastic flowerpot manufacturer...
http://www.accoona.com/about/press/press_release_
Yes, it ranks above emmigration!!!!
That would never happen here because... (Score:4, Funny)
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:Who is actually irresponsible? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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]
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)
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.
Re:Yes they are (Score:3, Funny)
Besides, stations like CNN and Fox are clearly republican slanted. Like lou fucking dobbs. he's just a complete asshat who thinks that nobody outside of the USA is entitled to work. Then he bitches that people come to the USA for work.
Tom
Re:Yes they are (Score:3, Informative)
It doesn't really matter how liberal the troops are if all the Generals are raving Buchanon followers. Since the right tends to be populated by the robber barons (as well as their willing dupes), the robber baron in question is quite likely to be a republican.
In reality, bias towards the almighty dollar is what skews American (or even Arab) journalism.
This notion of a "liberal bias" in the media is just something that the republican party uses to stir up it's willing dupes.
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."
A very important lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Another important lesson here is that the media often doesn't do its job when it comes to presenting Americans with a deeper report on totalitarian governments and violence abroad. So far, no American newspaper has reprinted the Danish cartoons, allegedly out of respect for Muslims. Yet the New York Times will report on something as safe as "Piss Christ" which is significantly more of an attack on Christianity than those cartoons were on Islam. Why? Because then they'd have to worry about Islamists carbombing the NY Times. If they wrote scathing exposes of China, Syria, Libya and other states like those, they might have to worry about those countries' security and intel agencies killing their reporters abroad.
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.
Feigning Death (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Not to smart.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Simple revenge motive (Score:5, Funny)
They're just ticked off because The Onion keeps fooling [danwei.org] them. [danwei.org]
He's not "making a point about freedom of speech" (Score:4, Insightful)
Message to teh East... (Score:4, Funny)