We have officially just seen what happens when a 120-year-old man time travels from the 1910s to the 2010s and is told to "put that Ai Weiwei Gangnam video on the Internet." His head doesn't explode, but we wish it did. Look at the above. Just look at it as you would a Millie Brown art exhibition of vomit and bodily goo. "Raw Video," Washington Post calls it in its headline. If this didn't bum me out so muc ...

By Beijing Cream Let’s talk about journalism and the Olympics. No, not the complete indifference given to China’s 96 Paralympics gold medals, but a more familiar problem: plagiarism. A former senior journalist at the Global Times is probably still wondering what the hell hit her, after being caught lifting material and inventing quotes – including a fake interview with London mayor Boris Johnson – during la ...

Journalists are fed a lot of crap by the world. Specifically by public relations flacks and sources, but really, the world at large, because we're surrounded by crap, by fetid logs of horse and other rancid mammalian shit dripping with stupidity and awfulness. It takes a decent journalist to filter that shit and present it in a way that is digestible to a halfway intelligent and educated human being. It mea ...

No one would confuse China Daily for a real newspaper -- the kind that doesn't write "A Friend's Departure" on its front page when North Korea's leader dies -- but the company undoubtedly has real journalists on staff, veteran reporters who quietly toil within China's noxious media environment to produce respectable work, and it's those journalists I currently feel for. In yesterday's edition of China Daily ...

UPDATE: Wang Xiangwei has responded in an interview with AFP. See below. Veteran reporter (not black comedian) Paul Mooney, whose contract with South China Morning Post was not renewed last month, delivered quite the parting shot at his former employer in the Hong Kong e-magazine iSun Affairs, and he names names. Mooney, a multiple-award-winning journalist, aimed his worst at editor-in-chief Wang Xiangwei, ...

Here is the perfect example of a Chinese state mouthpiece spinning cock out of bull. Attention: this piece, "President Hu picks up China's dignity," published on People's Daily at 1:05 pm today. Scene: G20 Summit in Los Cabos, Mexico; as leaders walk off after their photo op, Chinese president Hu Jintao bends over to pick up something... After posing for the family photo, all the leaders walked off the stag ...

Shanghaiist has the story, as does the Beijinger. But damn it all if we're letting a sex mushroom get through the day without ribbing it here. On June 17, Xi'an Up Close《西安零距离》aired a story about a "mushroom" that was found in Liucunbu village in Shaanxi province. The reporter, Ye Yunfeng, says at one point: “We can see here that this thing looks a lot like a fungus, with a mushroom head on both sides; at t ...

[caption id="attachment_3198" align="alignnone" width="440" caption="The supposed "riot" at Foxconn... heard around the offices of shitty journalists everywhere"][/caption] Eric Fish of Sinostand basically said all I wanted to in his post earlier today, "Foxconn: A Very Quiet Riot": Over the past day or so several foreign media outlets including Huffington Post, Business Insider and Bloomberg TV h ...

[caption id="attachment_3194" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Who's the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about mainland China?"][/caption] By RFH The 100 Days campaign has been providing many freelancers the opportunity to convince editors back home that there’s some kind of slash ’n’ burn bender going on. A lot of these articles have been boilerplate mush, oozing from the c ...

[caption id="attachment_2689" align="alignnone" width="380" caption="Will Evans, courtesy Liz Thomas, via MSNBC story"][/caption] MSNBC has a China blog called "Behind the Wall," and as the name might suggest, it targets an American audience that may not be as familiar with China as those of us here on the ground ("behind the wall" sounds a lot like "other side of the world," i.e. a throwaway cliche one scr ...

Al-Jazeera's China correspondent, Melissa Chan, was denied a visa extension and scheduled to leave the country last night, marking the end of the Qatar-based company's Beijing bureau. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, of which Chan was a board member, was quick to issue a statement: Chinese officials had expressed anger at a documentary the channel aired last November. Melissa Chan did not even pla ...

I work at a small newspaper that employs a staff of Chinese writers and editors who write and edit in English. They're an earnest, hard-working bunch, and I admire them immensely for consistently putting together a publication in their second language. But sometimes, mistakes happen -- which is why they employ myself and D, the other foreigner on staff. The vast majority of the time, we catch the mistakes. ...

[caption id="attachment_2114" align="alignnone" width="387" caption="Associated Press reporter Greg Risling"][/caption] Let's get the facts straight to start. The USC students who were shot and killed last Wednesday were not in a "new 3-series BMW," as was originally reported. The AP's Greg Risling, who has been assigned this beat, can be commended for reporting in a follow-up story: Some Chinese students a ...

[caption id="attachment_2038" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="If you're offended by Kate Winslet's nipple, you should not watch Heavenly Creatures, Jude, Titanic, Hideous Kinky, Holy Smoke, Quills, Iris, Little Children, or The Reader"][/caption] Earlier this week I came across a story on Offbeat China about Kate Winslet's breasts being censored in the Chinese theatrical release of Titanic 3D ...

[caption id="attachment_1309" align="alignnone" width="529" caption=""All together now: Cheeeese!""][/caption] This is so rich. ...

[caption id="attachment_1262" align="alignnone" width="449" caption="As R-Truth would say: You got got, WSJ."][/caption] Alternate post title: Wall Street Journal's Jason Chow Posts Week-Old Story About Conan/Da Peng, Gets Called Out On It In Comments Section, Revises Post Without Telling Anyone, Deletes Comments Because that's what happened. ...

Deadspin's Barry Petchesky posted excerpts of an email sent by the Asian American Journalists Association yesterday (earlier today for those in China) that includes a list of stereotypes for journalists to avoid when covering Jeremy Lin. As Petchesky hilariously points out, "Half of these are references nobody's even made yet, so thanks, AAJA, for giving racists some new ideas," and then says, "Puns are the ...

The article in question was actually published yesterday, so please don't be misled by the use of "today" in the title. It's just an expression. Some reporters got "assaulted" in Panhe, Guangdong, and though we don't know the extent of anyone's injuries (just a minor detail, right guys?), MSNBC's "Behind the Wall" China blog decided to "report" on the incident, using a Foreign Correspondents Club of China e ...