In this ongoing debate, I would like to step back and re-focus.
What is at issue is whether society works according to rule of law and defined legal processes and principles, or whether it is constantly warped by the powerful to serve their needs, whether individually, in groups, or as an organization.
This discussion has changed focus somewhat so I think it wise to re-post on the topic. To recap:
1. Western media report about protest comes out. Spins the professor as a leading light or dissident or whatever, arrest as political. He was involved in earlier protests years ago, did serve time in prison, and so on, but they go way too far playing up his stature. Almost certainly a bs characterization spun for political purposes, we know the Western press is clueless/corrupt and unable to change. But we have no idea about the actual charges…
2. Roland Soong then attacks this professor because he is unhappy that the Western press has gone and gotten the story wrong again. He doesn’t merely provide information and background, but gives us his frank opinion without any backing. He first links to the old Sina article, which calls the professor a brainwasher in the title, gives us his opinion without any reference to where or how he has come to this conclusion, and then later links to other sources to provide a fuller picture (now that the bell has been rung).
3. The media story at first is about the arrest and the protest. Soong makes it about whether the professor is a charlatan, even though we have no information really on why he was arrested. Further, Soong seizes upon Chinese media reports from days later that conveniently are limited in scope so as to avoid reporting on the protest, as evidence that it must have been this incident with the vendor that led to the arrest. Even though that story is not highly likely, although it certainly is plausible.
4. Soong certainly has no personal information about this professor, no means of verification, and doesn’t even seem to have any concern for the collateral damage Ding represents in Roland’s initiative against the Western press. It should be noted that no one is claiming that the professor himself arranged somehow for the Western media to be advised of the protest, so he is presumably a blameless person in this ugly saga (although you can bet he will soon be blamed for ‘instigating’ the protest, as we know all public incidents in China are caused by rogue activity by splittists, foreign agents, and other reactionary forces that our only-lying-sometimes news sources always tell us about).
5. Why weren’t the students satisfied with the information they received at the police station? The police, especially in larger cities, are often quite good at handling these types of situations. They must have had some communication with the students, and yet the students were not satisfied. This seems like a story worth investigating. Too bad the entire story now has a different slant.
6. Using other bad acts or rumors to implicitly find someone guilty (of still undefined crimes) is just beneath someone of Soong’s stature, and its the worst sort of lawlessness. What if he is wrong in this case? If he continues like this he will be, sooner or later.
Is Ding an inveterate self-promoter? Is he prone to high exaggeration? Or does he just say whatever the heck he wants? I do not know, and I do not care. What I care about is hit jobs on people who get arrested, just because their case is used for political purposes by some media companies. That is no different than the politically-motivated, fact-free hit pieces in the newspapers of select recent arrestees during the Cultural Revolution.
With no factual information at hand. And no verification capability. Attacking another with various and sundry bad deeds, throwing it all against the wall to see what sticks, so that the legality of the arrest becomes secondary. He is a bad guy, so it doesn’t really matter why or in what manner the police arrested him, apparently.
Soong without a doubt has jumped the gun on this issue, as he has no information and no ability to gather it. it is highly unprofessional to simply say stuff like, he is a criminal and a liar and a cheat, without going a step farther and telling us why you think that, how you know that. Of course, Roland is allowed to comment on anyone he wants to, and if his readers want him to add this value then maybe he should do that. Perhaps his readers don’t want to be bothered with the reasons for Soong’s opinion, they just want the bottom line from him. But that’s not what a media critic does; this role is reserved for partisan supporters (apologists, we call them). You know, the see-no-evil types that every country has.
There are a lot of people with rose-colored glasses on. Political detentions are way up, for purely political speech. All C 08 said (and I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time) was that the country’s system has to change. That is so far from any sort of action against the state to be highly worrisome, when it leads to arrests and sometimes lengthy detentions.
But everyone wants to want that none of these stories are really political in nature, and that is an unwarranted assumption until the facts are known. Unfortunately, oftentimes we never get a clear picture of these stories, because of the lack of official transparency.
Roland could have just said something like this, and he would have been ok:
This characterization of Ding doesn’t seem rooted in reality: I am not sure if some of these reporters even did basic due diligence on Ding. I doubt that Ding is even a real professor, and yet most or all of the news reports identify him as such.Ding is a fairly well-known character online, here are some links:
But Soong went much, much farther.
I’m curious as to why, in this post and the earlier one, you’re emphasizing the “Sina.com” aspect of the article rather than its actual source. It was originally written as a cover feature for New Century Weekly (aka New Times Weekly), a magazine that does solid investigative journalism. I remember when this issue came out – it made quite a splash among media and academia bloggers. Maybe it doesn’t make a difference if you tend to discount all journalism on the mainland, but at least under the present press registration system, there’s a vast gulf between a registered magazine like NCW and a web portal like Sina that has only limited reporting abilities.
You sum up ESWN’s view as, “He is a bad guy, so it doesn’t really matter why or in what manner the police arrested him, apparently,” but an equally valid, and more useful, conclusion seems to be “The police have arrested him, and he should be treated according to the rule of law regardless of whether he’s a bad guy or a liberal activist,” only there’s no hand-holding to explain precisely why it’s such a problem that some media reports immediately paint Ding as a martyr. The media (east and west) likes its heroes, but one test of a fair justice system is in how it treats people who aren’t so photogenic.
Thanks for your comment.
Let me try a few different tactics to approach this question:
First of all, I assume you have no problem with Roland’s post, where he unequivocally slanders this Mr. Ding without any personal knowledge of him, just based on media reports, is that true? Do you believe Roland’s actions were reasonable?
If a person, let’s just say a Chinese blogger, someone who could conceivably be arrested for political reasons, was arrested and charged with tax fraud (a charge often used for political purposes, as I expect you are already aware), would it be reasonable for me to attack that blogger in a post noting the arrest? What if I went on and on about how I don’t know that guy but my friends do and they all hate him and my one friend thinks he stole her iphone but couldn’t prove it but she is sure it was him and he is so arrogant, everyone knows that….
Would you have trouble with such a prejudicial post? Would it be just for me to do that? Roland did basically the same thing, only using the articles as proof of prior bad acts, with the clear intention of smearing this guy and changing the story from the unusual arrest and the subsequent protest to the character of Ding.
Second, do you believe that NCW could print a hit piece such as the one in question regarding a person with good government relationships, or do you believe that government control of domestic media would prevent such a piece from seeing the light of day? If you feel this hypothetical article of another, better-connected person would pass the censors, please explain why you think it can while other articles cannot. Indeed, when have you seen such a direct attack on an individual in a domestic new source before? I would bet the article caused quite a ruckus given how directly it went after Ding. Quite unusual, no?
I never sought to evaluate the veracity of the article, (and yes, failed, unintentionally, to make clear what organization first published it, you are right on that point), although I did cast doubt on its truth, based on constant political interference in the news media. I realize some prefer to trust these news sources in most cases, to which I simply ask where that line is drawn and how anyone can make such a judgment.
Roland never tried to evaluate the article either; he simply took it at face value. It must be true because this news source has printed other investigatory pieces I trusted to be true. But, yet again, what he did was basically smear this guy.
I would counsel against looking at this as a two-sided debate. I am not defending the Western press at all, and I believe I made that perfectly clear. But the sins of the Western media cannot permit someone like Roland to smear a person he doesn’t even know.
You write: “A more useful conclusion is ‘The police have arrested him, and he should be treated according to the rule of law regardless of whether he’s a bad guy or a liberal activist’”.
Well, first of all, the initial question raised by the Western media (correctly or incorrectly) was, is this a political arrest? If he was arrested for being a liberal activist then rule of law does not exist in the first place, the court can be as formal and proper as it wants in sentencing him, but its still not rule of law.
Roland’s reply is, effectively, no it can’t be a political arrest because look at what a liar and all-around bad guy Ding is! And that is not logical, it is harmful, and it is unbecoming of a professional like Roland.
How does Roland’s hit piece further rule of law in China? When Ken Lay or any other high-profile suspect is arrested in the US, do all the papers print articles about what a bad person he is, how he cheats on his wife or kicks his dog? If not, why not?
Going back to our arrested blogger, if I wrote a post noting the arrest and went on to attack this person for various and sundry bad deeds, and then wrote something along the lines of ‘Oh, but I do hope rule of law will prevail and the blogger will get a fair trial’, would you doubt my commitment to rule of law?
I will say it again, what Roland did was exactly the kind of lawless, reckless work that the smear merchants manning the newspapers back in the late 60s did. There is only a difference of degree.
Now, having said all that, did I answer your question at all? Or am I just arguing past you?