Eric's Beijing Diary

Great story in the China Daily about a practical joke played on the media by a couple of Chinese bloggers. This time, the target of the ruse was western journalists. A couple of well known Chinese bloggers shut down their blogs with a brief message stating that their blogs were temporarily closed. According to the China Daily, it was a ruse, meant to test how foreign media would react.

Here is how the Reuters wire service reported the incident:

"Two of China's most adventurous Web logs closed on Wednesday under government orders, the latest in a wave of shutdowns as Chinese censors tighten controls in cyberspace, especially while the national parliament meets."

The China Daily makes a big deal about the fact that whoever put this report together at Reuters failed to pick up the phone and verify what everyone just assumed to be true. Well, this joke on a western news agency by a Chinese blogger got my attention, but a question began to form in my mind as I read the story. I thought, "I wonder how many people reading this article (in the China Daily) about Reuters' failure to check out a story, actually took the trouble themselves to check out the China Daily story to see if they were right about how wrong Reuters was."

I decided to do the job myself, and learned some interesting things. In checking the Reuters statement (quoted above) I discovered that the China Daily, in quoting the Reuters statement, had omitted the last clause ("especially while the national parliament meets."). This is significant. The China Daily doesn't mention anywhere that the incident was staged during the meeting of then National Party Congress and the People's Consultative Congress. Put that fact together with the actual announcement posted on the closed web logs:

"Because of unavoidable reasons known to all, this blog is now temporarily closed."

Unavoidable reasons known to all?? This is not just a prank. It is a deliberate attempt to deceive. What is any western journalist reading this supposed to conclude, especially given the fact that the National Congress was in session? The China Daily story also omits the Reuters statement the next day:

BEIJING (Reuters) - Two of China's most adventurous Web logs reappeared on Thursday, a day after apparently being shut down by government censors.
The blogs, belonging to Beijing-based journalist Wang Xiaofeng and to entertainment reporter Yuan Lei, from the southern city of Guangzhou, carried messages saying they had been temporarily closed, but they were both accessible again on Thursday.

"I like telling jokes, but this really wasn't a joke and it wasn't meant to deceive everyone," read a new post on Wang's blog, known as "Massage Milk."

But Wang, who blogs under the name "Dai San Ge Biao," a play on former leader Jiang Zemin's Three Represents, or "San Ge Dai Biao" political slogan, is known for his political satire, raising the possibility that the closure may have been a prank.

So what is really going on? A surface reading of the China Daily article had me believing that a Chinese blogger had pulled a fast one on the western media. But Reuters is a reputable wire service, so I was curious. Reading the Reuters stories together gives a very different picture. And, according to Reuters, Wang Xiaofeng is now refusing to comment on the incident, which causes me to question his credibility. In fact it almost begins to look like the government did order the shutdown of the blogs, and then told the bloggers later to say that it was a prank.

What is the lesson here. Simply that no one has a monopoly on misinformation. The original blog contained misinformation (unless its closure truly was government ordered), because it states that the blog was closed, "because of unavoidable reasons known to all." But if it was, in fact, a prank, then that statement is a blatant falsehood. because a reason like that would not be known to all, it would be known to no one.

The Reuters piece contained misinformation (again, unless the closure was government ordered), because it is now obvious that Reuters did not take the trouble to verify that the shutdown had actually been ordered by the government. They assumed it.

The China Daily contains misinformation, because it fails to note that the shutdown occurred during the meeting of the People's Consultative Congress, and accepts, at face value, the statement of the blogger that the shutdown was a prank.

Doesn't anyone just tell the simple truth anymore?

Labels: Chinese Media