Going down a news rabbit hole in China
Trying to confirm a Web report becomes a lesson in the uses and abuses of news on the Internet.
from the June 29, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
On one, he identified himself as Pan Shupei, a reporter for a state-run agency whose personal motto is "Restore the reality of news and report the news behind the news."
He said his boss had closed the website down for a while because the Tangshan story had attracted too much attention. He wanted to cool the issue down now that it had become a national Internet "cause célèbre."
"This was an easy case to spread because people hate corrupt officials' connections with powerful rich people," says Mr. Qiang, who tracks Chinese websites. Who wanted to spread it, though? And is it true?
The day before he shuttered his site, "North Star" recounted in a post that he and his colleagues had decided to publish the article they had received about Yang and his gang because, "It was recommended by an editor from a very important Communist Party newspaper."
"This is an internal leak through the Rule of Law Network," Qiang believes, which suggests that, while the site may not have a real address nor a genuine sponsor, it does enjoy the support of one government or party agency or another.
"How true it [the leak] is is another matter," Qiang adds. Somebody, somewhere, seems to have wanted to draw national attention to a criminal case that had gone unreported. Who that might be, and what the purpose was, remains unanswered. "We have to wait and see what the official version of events is, and how it differs from the Internet version," says Qiang.
The reasons why that version has emerged are still obscure. But despite the manipulation, Qiang argues, the Internet in China provides a megaphone for such stories. As such, he says, it remains "a force to make the truth come out."
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