On April 14, New York Times reporters Kirk Semple and Eric Schmitt published an article titled “China’s Actions in Hunt for Jet Are Seen as Hurting as Much as Helping” that quoted two government officials — one from the US and one from Malaysia, both unnamed — who said China has not, to put it nicely, contributed much to the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370. It was a disturbing piece, not least because it seemed to signal the search may have entered a new phase in which the frustrations and difficulties of finding the missing jet could spill into finger-pointing and politics.

No one was doubting that the Chinese had the best intentions in mind, but the truth — an unfortunate one that no one seems able to deny — is that they lacked the expertise and technology to help. (So did other countries, of course, like Malaysia, so its government official’s quote — “‘Really helpful, aren’t they?’ he said sarcastically” – seems diplomatically tone-deaf.) The New York Times article wasn’t exactly groundbreaking, but there was nothing offensive about it. Notably, the journalists did their due diligence:

• China’s foreign ministry was given a chance to comment but chose not to.
• Balance:
  

  “The scope, scale and expense of Chinese operations exceeds anything that China has undertaken to date,” said Jonathan D. Pollack, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution. “The Chinese are at least as intent on achieving definitive results as anyone else.”

  “It’s possible that this has led some Chinese personnel to reach premature judgments based on limited or inconclusive observations,” Mr. Pollack said. “But this hardly seems unique to China.”

• And most importantly: high-level officials in national governments apparently felt the need to speak publicly about China’s involvement. That makes the story newsworthy.

Not everyone agrees — namely, People’s Daily, the official paper of the Chinese Communist Party. It decided the Times were guilty of exploiting the tragedy to “launch a few cheap shots at China,” as it wrote this morning in a piece called “People’s Daily Journalists address provocative New York Times report” (as tweeted by NY Times reporter Edward Wong). For whatever reason, instead of using text, the piece (“op-ed”? we’re not sure what to call this) is a series of screenshots:

Yes, it does appear the People’s Daily actually called the Times’s PR department and asked – demanded – that reporters turn over their sources. The US justice department has had less success getting journalists to comply, so People’s Daily really had no chance here.

The problem, once again, seems to lie in how China views the role of media. Here, newspapers are expected to leave inconvenient truths unsaid for fear of being rude, or — to put it less nicely — they are trained lapdogs for the government’s use. There is little to no self-awareness, no concept of a public editor, and practically no loyalty to truth, or “facts.” In that case, perhaps we should commend People’s Daily: at least they made a couple of calls, and sent an email.

Ben Richardson, newly “freelance”

Bloomberg continues to lose longtime reporters because it values financial services over journalism. On Monday, Bloomberg News editor Ben Richardson, based in Hong Kong, resigned after 13 years with the company over the mishandling of an investigative piece — it was unceremoniously spiked — about a Chinese entrepreneur’s financial ties with Communist Party leaders and their families.

That story in question concerned Wang Jianlin, founder of the Dalian Wanda Group, and resulted in the firing of senior reporter Mike Forsythe. It also kickstarted a bit of a media donnybrook (the best kind) between Bloomberg and the New York Times. As the Times summarizes (from the position of “victor”) in a recent article:

Several Bloomberg employees have said that top editors in New York decided last October not to run the article in order to avoid raising the ire of senior party officials, who had been angered in 2012 by investigative reporting at Bloomberg, and running the risk of Bloomberg getting expelled from mainland China. Matthew Winkler, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, denied the accusations of self-censorship and said that the article had not been spiked. One of the main reporters on the article, Michael Forsythe, was suspended by Bloomberg. Mr. Forsythe left the company and now works for The New York Times.

But it’s Richardson’s words we’d like to focus on, because they’re astringent and cutting, containing all the wonderful gruffness of a veteran newshound. Here he is writing to Jim Romenesko:

The sad thing about this is that a small group of incompetent and self-serving managers have screwed things up for everyone else. I spent 13 years at the company, as did Mike F. [Michael Forsythe]. I worked with some fantastic people who did and continue to do great work. That’s been undermined by a tiny band of fools.

Last Thursday, Bloomberg chairman Peter T. Grauer said in a Hong Kong speech (again, as reported by the New York Times), “You’re all aware that every once in a while we wander a little bit away from that [stories about the local business and economic environment] and write stories that we probably may have kind of rethought — should have rethought.” He was likely referring to a June 2012 story about Xi Jinping’s family wealth that resulted in major loss of revenue in the China market.

Richardson’s reaction to Grauer’s comments:

It’s interesting to see Grauer speak so plainly. He is a straight-talking man and I’ve always enjoyed his frank comments. I enjoyed them especially today in the sense that they illustrate the frame of mind of senior management from the business side — someone should ask Mike to go public on his views on the right to free speech as a universal value. //january town hall. hint hint///

As I’ve written in this space before, there’s nothing inherently wrong about being a financial company that prioritizes profit over journalism, but there will be consequences, one of which is the loss of journalistic talent. Maybe in the grand scheme of things it’s a small cost, one that, as a financial company, Bloomberg has no problem eating.

“Is Beijing about to Boot the New York Times?” asks the headline to this Foreign Policy article (not paywalled!) by Isaac Stone Fish. It’s a fair bit of speculation: 12 Times journalists are apparently anxiously waiting for their annual visa renewals, as revealed by two sources speaking to FP on background. (Emphasis on either “anxious” or “still waiting,” depending on your level of cynicism about media / China.) About a dozen Bloomberg journalists are reportedly in the same boat.

The current round of difficulties began, the reporters said, after the Nov. 13 publication of a story about J.P. Morgan Chase’s alleged link to Wen’s daughter. “My guess is they concluded in recent weeks that they needed to take another step because they thought we hadn’t gotten the message,” one of the journalists said. The other concurred: “Everything was going fine” until the second Wen story came out.

Of course, the speculation could also be called premature. Kicking out a paper of the Times’s stature would be a huge embarrassment to China, any reasonable person would think. One of the interviewed NYT reporters called it the “nuclear option,” suggesting that, despite the recent commotion, China may not be willing to go that far. Why would the country risk this becoming a diplomatic issue?

On his trip to Beijing in early December, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden raised the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping, and publicly chided Beijing, saying the United States has “profound disagreements” with the “treatment of U.S. journalists” in China.

“I think Biden’s mention helped,” said one of the New York Times reporters. “It put it at the top of the agenda, and let the Chinese know that there would probably be repercussions.”

Then again, the Chinese government doesn’t “play nice,” said one of the NYT reporters. Yeah, thing is, political journalists don’t either. This will be an interesting story to follow.

Is Beijing about to Boot the New York Times? (Foreign Policy)

Also see: The New York Times Has Lost $3 Million In Revenue Since China Blocked Its Website

The latest column from New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan is about China: an article that first summarizes why it’s becoming increasingly difficult for foreign correspondents to work here, then reminds its readers that the Times remains – unlike Bloomberg, I think is clearly one implication — a news company first and foremost.

Here’s the article’s kicker:

James L. McGregor, former Beijing bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, offered this blunt assessment in The Times’s Nov. 25 article:

“It’s looking increasingly like as a media company, you have a choice in China. You either do news or you do business, but it’s hard to do both.”

So far, The Times — and, to varying degrees, its competitors — has continued to “do news.” That’s worthwhile, and challenging, and not very likely to get easier.

The part that undoubtedly everyone will point out, tweet, and re-blog, however, is this: the New York Times’s expose on Wen Jiabao, the one that got its website blocked, has reportedly cost the company $3 million in revenue.

That cost, surely, has been somewhat offset by winning the Pulitzer. (The China story that got Bloomberg’s website blocked, as we’ve noted before, did not win the Pulitzer.) Still, $3 million is a lot in this day and age for print media. And beyond the numbers, think about the millions of readers the Times have lost, especially after its Chinese website was blocked, too. Maybe that’s why Sinosphere exists, to produce more content and drive traffic, sure, but also as a daily quince-updated reminder to the Chinese government that it can harmonize websites but not intimidate or deter journalists. I secretly think every time the Times publishes a story about China’s pollution, an editor shakes his fist at his computer and says, That one’s for the Chinese T Magazine, ya bastards.

But does any of this matter? Sullivan thinks not: “As Ms. Abramson noted, its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., ‘doesn’t flinch’ from running critical China stories.”

It’s what Sulzberger should and would say, of course. For all our sakes, let’s hope he believes it with all his heart.

The Thorny Challenge of Covering China (NY Times)

In an otherwise excellent piece on Chinese tennis star Li Na, Brook Larmer, writing in the New York Times, made one critical error, which Chinese media quickly pointed out. The offending passage originally read:

The note didn’t elaborate on her reasons: the burnout from excessive training, the outrage at her coaches’ attempts to squelch her romance with a male teammate named Jiang Shan, and the debilitating period which the team leader wanted her to play through by taking steroid pills, to which she was allergic.

China Daily retorted with a statement from the Tennis Management Center of General Administration of Sport of China, which denied that Li was forced to take “steroid pills.”

The cynical will snicker about such a swift, seemingly oversensitive response from a Chinese sports governing body to what was essentially a throwaway line in a 5,000-plus-word article. But China’s tennis officials were right to issue a response. Steroid accusations are never taken lightly, in any sport (except maybe American football, where — for the athletes’ sake — I hope all of them are on some sort of performance enhancer), and more vitally — the officers were correct.

The New York Times issued this correction on Wednesday, and appended the change in its piece:

An earlier version of this article misidentified the medication that Li Na felt pressured to take in 2002.  It was hormone medicine used to play through a debilitating period, not steroid pills.  And the article misidentified the person who pressured her to take the medicine.  It was her team leader, not her head coach.

The error was apparently one of mistranslation, reports SCMP:

Reporter Larmer later revealed that the article’s background information had been pieced together from interviews with Li and parts of her Chinese-language biography Fighting Alone. The term “steroid pills” had been a mis-translation of the Chinese term for “hormone medication.”

(Quick aside: what medications are classified as steroids, which are deemed illegal, and why, are actually more arbitrary than it should be. A discussion for another time, another website, possibly.)

The New York Times has officially apologized to Li’s agent, Max Eisenbud.

Eisenbud notified media of the apology in a press conference after Li’s August 28 victory over Sweden’s Sofia Arvidsson in the US Open, Tencent Sports reported. He told reporters that Li was “already in the final stages of her career” and unverified rumours of steroid abuse would not faze her.

“She has already invested a lot in playing tennis for China,” Eisenbud reportedly said. “Please give her more of your attention and encouragement.”

Li Na is currently in the final 16 at the US Open. We are rooting for her, actually, and if you want to do know why… go read Brook Larmer’s article.

David Barboza’s expose on the extent of Wen Jiabao’s family’s “hidden riches” has won him a Putlizer. He beat out the Associated Press for its coverage in Syria and Richard Marosi of the Los Angeles Times for his work on deportation of Mexican immigrants.

Statement:

Awarded to David Barboza of The New York Times for his striking exposure of corruption at high levels of the Chinese government, including billions in secret wealth owned by relatives of the prime minister, well documented work published in the face of heavy pressure from the Chinese officials.

He is awarded $10,000.

Meanwhile, the New York Times remains blocked in China, which means the pool is still open: on what day will the new York Times be unblocked? Prize for the winner.

UPDATE, 5:42 pm: China’s foreign ministry has responded. Via Reuters:

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying repeated her government’s condemnation of the story.

“Our stance and attitude on this issue is very clear. We believe the relevant New York Times report had ulterior motives,” she told reporters in Beijing, without elaborating.

(H/T Shanghaiist)

Chinese hackers, possibly using phishing software, reportedly broke into the New York Times’s computer network four months ago and installed malware that enabled them to access the personal computers of 53 employees. All indications are that the attack is a response to the paper’s investigation, led by Shanghai bureau chief David Barboza, into premier Wen Jiabao’s family fortunes. The NY Times says its computers were compromised as far back as September 13, just as they were wrapping up reporting for the Wen piece, which was published on October 25.

The concern here should not be for the New York Times, which had nothing stolen and no one harmed (and whose employees, frankly, should know better than to get phished). Near the middle of the NY Times’s four-page article, this:

What they appeared to be looking for were the names of people who might have provided information to Mr. Barboza.

Like a vindictive gangster, they were after informants. Chinese agents were after Chinese sources who could then be punished, since — like cops — the NY Times’s reporters are off limits. What we have is a high-level government equivalent of the street code “snitches get stitches.” Does anyone still wonder why journalists here are so rarely privy to leaked information from inside Zhongnanhai, China’s central government compound?

Thankfully, it appears that the New York Times used no anonymous sources for their Wen story:

Mr. Barboza’s research on the stories, as reported previously in The Times, was based on public records, including thousands of corporate documents through China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce. Those documents — which are available to lawyers and consulting firms for a nominal fee — were used to trace the business interests of relatives of Mr. Wen.

But this case vividly illustrates the difficulty of doing investigative reporting here. Journalists, like beat-level cops in American urban areas, seem woefully ill-equipped to protect their sources, who bear too much risk.

Also, this bit can’t be very comforting:

“They could have wreaked havoc on our systems,” said Marc Frons, the Times’s chief information officer. “But that was not what they were after.”

The attack came after the government issued ominous warnings:

After The Times learned of warnings from Chinese government officials that its investigation of the wealth of Mr. Wen’s relatives would “have consequences”…

Consequences. Think Bobby Baccalieri of The Sopranos walking into a bar, taking two shots of Wild Turkey, and pointing to his head to indicate where a bullet goes.

You can’t accuse the Chinese of not knowing gamesmanship, a bit of tit for tat — you investigate our leader, we’ll spy on yours. You hurt his family, we’ll hurt yours.

The glaring difference, of course, is Wen Jiabao is one of the most powerful people in a country of 1.4 billion. Someone should probably hold him accountable, right? You disagree, Central Politburo?

For the record, China denies it hacked the New York Times.

Asked about evidence that indicated the hacking originated in China, and possibly with the military, China’s Ministry of National Defense said, “Chinese laws prohibit any action including hacking that damages Internet security.” It added that “to accuse the Chinese military of launching cyberattacks without solid proof is unprofessional and baseless.”

Hackers in China Attacked The Times for Last 4 Months (NY Times)

They’re already blocked, so fuck it, right? The New York Times has continued to delve into Wen Jiabao’s “hidden family fortunes,” following up on its original blockbuster that got the website blocked on the mainland. In “Lobbying, a Windfall and a Leader’s Family,” David Barbosa and co. report that Wen Jiabao was directly responsible for keeping the company from breaking up. In 1999,

“I humbly request that the vice premier lead and coordinate the matter from a higher level,” Ma Mingzhe, chairman of Ping An, implored in a letter to Mr. Wen that was reviewed by The New York Times.

Ping An was not broken up.

The rest, as they say, is history. Ping An became one of China’s largest financial companies, one which made Wen Jiabao’s family very, very rich. The NY Times offers this helpful infographic that shows the number of effective Ping An shares Wen’s family members owned (they did so through a series of other companies, notably the investment company Taihong). A more creative government would simply spin this as Wen being the most generous family man in the history of mankind. In a society more forgiving of these type of things, Wen could go before cameras and deliver a speech about how he isn’t ashamed to have used his connections in a interrelationship-based society to help his sister-in-law make a few million on the side, and his dear friend, the mother-in-law of his son, who was down on her luck and just needed a few million to get back on her feet. He could say that he’ll give all the money back but not the Tibetan mastiff, and perhaps we’ll all cheer his political acumen and call his speech Checkers 2.0.

The article isn’t as damning as the earlier one, which implied — in so many words, intended or not — that Wen was a hypocrite. This article makes no claims of broken laws or a smoking gun, and it’s coated in such financial-speak as to uninteresting to the layman — yet it has the establishment equally skittish, judging by their response:

In Beijing, China’s foreign ministry did not return calls seeking comment for this article. [...]

Neither Mr. Wen, who is expected to retire in March, nor Mr. Dai, who is now the head of the National Social Security Fund, could be reached for comment. [...]

After reviewing questions from The Times, the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange declined to comment. The China Securities Regulatory Commission in Beijing did not respond to inquiries.

Poor Wen. People just can’t seem to forget him soon enough.

Nice one, Gramps Wen. Via South China Morning Post (above image by cartoonist Harry Harrison):

In a letter submitted to the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top decision-making body of which the premier is also a member, Wen asked for a formal inquiry into claims made by The New York Times.

A report on October 26 alleged his family had amassed at least US$2.7 billion of assets during his premiership. The Standing Committee had agreed to his request, the sources said.

Wen Jiabao orders inquiry into Wen Jiabao… that’s some Scanner Darkly shit there. SCMP’s money line:

It is unclear what the inquiry is likely to dig up, or when the results will be published, if at all.

Here are a few things more likely to happen than a conviction of Wen Jiabao, ordered by Wen Jiabao:

• Kim Jong-un practices conjugal loyalty to this wife.
• A third party wins a state in a US presidential election.
• ASEAN gets a single currency.
• Vladimir Putin rocks out to Pussy Riot.
• Cormac McCarthy writes a shitty novel.
• Hong Kong returns to British rule.
• Elvis joins the Rolling Stone’s 50th Anniversary Tour.
• Kate Upton hooks up with Jason Acuña.
• Kate Middleton poses nude in The Sun.
• Lionel Messi transfers to Real Madrid.
• Jurassic Park in real life.
• The Cubs win the World Series.

China Daily Show, get to work.

Meanwhile, it’s not too late to participate in our New York Times office pool – when will the website be blocked until? The nearest chosen date was November 10, while Kaiser Kuo has the backend at April 1, 2013.

(H/T Alicia, Dray)

The lawyers for the Wen Jiabao family issued an official statement yesterday regarding the New York Times’s recent piece that got the website harmonized inside China. It’s “a rare instance of a powerful Chinese political family responding directly to a foreign media report,” NY Times reports. But the lawyers, while trying to deny everything, actually deny nothing. Read the translated statement closely, as brought to you by SCMP:

Authorized Statement

Entrusted by the family members of Wen Jiabao, we hereby issue a statement regarding the New York Times’ untrue report about Wen Jiabao and his relatives:

I. The so-called “hidden riches” of Wen Jiabao’s family members in the New York Times’ report does not exist.

II. Some of Wen Jiabao’s family members have not engaged in business activities. Some were engaged in business activities, but they did not carry out any illegal business activity. They do not hold shares of any companies.

III. The mother of Wen Jiabao, except receiving salary/pension according to the regulation, has never had any income or property.

IV. Wen Jiabao has never played any role in the business activities of his family members, still less has he allowed his family members’ business activities to have any influence on his formulation and execution of policies.

V. Other relatives of Wen Jiabao and the “friends” and “colleagues” of those relative are responsible for all their own business activities.

VI. We will continue to make clarifications regarding untrue reports by the New York Times, and reserve the right to hold it legally responsible.

BAI Tao
Jun He Law Offices

WANG Weidong
Grandall Law Firm (Beijing)

October 27, 2012

We’d like to offer a translation of the translation:

I. Of course they don’t exist. They’re right out in the fucking open!

II. Some of Wen Jiabao’s family members don’t do business. These “some” — who don’t do business, or did you not hear us the first time? — do not hold shares of any companies. Allow us to quote someone who speaks at your level, so that you understand: “Can I make it any more obvious?” –Avril Lavigne

III. Wen Jiabao’s mother is a freeloader whose only good deed in life is giving birth to Wen Jiabao. That woman is a saint.

IV. Wen Jiabao is awesome.

V. Some of Wen Jiabao’s family and friends do business. Wen Jiabao does not speak, interact, or otherwise think about them. What, you think he has that kind of time?

VI. Go kill yourselves, you fucking Western media ingrates.

On what day will the NY Times homepage be unblocked in China? Please submit your answer either in the comment section or via email. You can also tweet at us. We will try our best to send a prize to the person who nails the correct date.

For context:

• Bloomberg has been blocked since July 2012.
• Sinocism has been blocked since June 2012.
• Blogspot has been blocked since May 2009.
• YouTube has been blocked since March 2009.
• Facebook has been blocked since July 2008.
• Wretch.cc has been blocked since August 2007.
• Pornhub remains unblocked.

NY Times was harmonized on Friday for this.

(H/T Gareth M.)

While everyone else was talking about Ai Weiwei, the New York Times had the temerity to publish an explosive report about Premier Wen Jiabao, probably the most popular and ostensibly clean politician in China. Grandpa Wen, as he’s affectionately called, has apparently made a lot of money for his family, but that should come as no surprise to anyone. But the Times is currently in Chinese Internet purgatory because it painstakingly detailed exactly how much money: “A review of corporate and regulatory records indicates that the prime minister’s relatives, some of whom have a knack for aggressive deal-making, including his wife, have controlled assets worth at least $2.7 billion.” And it’s $2.7 billion that Wen’s family has taken pains to not disclose.

In case you’re wondering: no, the Foreign Ministry has not answered the NY Times’s calls.

You’ve already probably read the article, but we’ll go ahead and leave just this one excerpt:

The apparent efforts to conceal the wealth reflect the highly charged politics surrounding the country’s ruling elite, many of whom are also enormously wealthy but reluctant to draw attention to their riches. When Bloomberg News reported in June that the extended family of Vice President Xi Jinping, set to become China’s next president, had amassed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, the Chinese government blocked access inside the country to the Bloomberg Web site.