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: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.