Chinese Bloggers Stage Hoax

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."

Comments

Re:Who is actually irresponsible?

[AKAImBatman]

According to the article, the reporter did try to contact Mr. Wang. OTOH, Wang claims that he was never contacted. Given that Mr. Wang is the perpetrator of a hoax, I'm inclined to believe that the blogger intentionally made himself hard to reach to insure his goals.

Re:Yes they are

[jedidiah]

The corporate overlords.

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.

Re:Kind of silly in my opinion

[Kadin2048]

Plus the message on the blog when the guy shut it down was obviously intended to cause a reader to draw the conclusion that it had been shut down by the government.

It's kind of like faking being hit by a car and then when people run out to help you, jumping up and screaming "fooled you!" Okay, so nice job, you fooled us, but only because we gave you more credit for not being a dumbass than we probably should have.

Those who speak out against Bush

[MythoBeast]

Here's your evidence. This lady is a VA nurse who wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper about how poorly Bush has been handling the Iraq war and huricane Katrina.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/33027/

She's been under investigation by the FBI since then, and they're threatening to throw her in jail on sedition charges. They've been using scare tactics like interrupting her in the middle of her work at the hospital and confiscating her work computer "to look for evidence".

The future is arriving faster than you think.

Re:Those who speak out against Bush

[_Sharp'r_]

According to your link, she isn't being investigated for a crime, her bosses at the VA were pissed because she identified herself as a VA nurse in her letter, so on the order of their HR director, their IT guys took her work computer for a couple of days to see if she wrote the letter on company time and/or equipment. Her union told her that she was reported to the FBI, but no one from the VA or from the FBI seems to have told her that or confirmed it. She's certainly not being harrassed by the FBI, at least according to the article you cite she's never even spoked to the FBI, she just says she's worried that they "might" be watching her based on her personal stereotype of FBI agents.

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.

communism?

[prlewis0]

This isn't a personal dig as it applies to pretty much everybody these days, but with all due respect the government of China really isn't very communist. Neither was the Soviet Union's or North Korea. It's a side issue to the debate here, but read Marx and then tell me that it's part of a communist system of government to censor blogs (or have public executions, or systematically starve whole regions etc etc). These types of governments may try to convince their people that they're living in a communist paradise where everyone's enlightened and equal, but let's not fall for the idea in the west too.

Re:Boys who cried wolf

[Anonymous Coward]

Singapore.

Re:Serious Question

[FooBarWidget]

"In which country do you now live?"

Netherlands.

"Why does your family no longer live in China?"

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.