Yahoo! and the police witch hunt
Did Yahoo! learn nothing from the US Congressional Committee hammering it got over its handling of the case of jailed dissident Chinese journalist Shi Tao?
A French news website, France 24, has reported that on March 21 Yahoo pasted a "most wanted" poster across its homepage of a group of Tibetans that police were trying to track down after the violent unrest in Lhasa.
It said MSN China made the same move, but didn't go as far as publishing the list on its homepage.
Yahoo! denied posting pictures of the wanted Tibetans:
"Contrary to media reports, Yahoo! Inc. is not displaying images on its web sites of individuals wanted by Chinese authorities in connection with the recent unrest in Tibet," it said in a statement sent to AFP in Paris.
"We are looking into this matter with Alibaba Group, the company that controls China Yahoo!."
In reply to the denial, France 24, which is run by Julien Pain formerly of Reporters Without Borders, said:
”The company does not deny that Yahoo! China has published the "wanted" posters. This is a common line of defence by Yahoo!, which tries to put the entire responsibility of its Chinese operations on its Chinese partner Alibaba.”
Meanwhile, the Communist Party flagship newspaper People’s Daily has reported that Yahoo! did publish the wanted photos.
Rebecca McKinnon, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre, a blogger and former CNN Beijing correspondent, writes:
“I wouldn't be surprised if the local editors just automatically ran it because everybody else in China was running it, then got over-ridden by management in the US who realized how badly this would play outside of China... Such is the disconnect between China and the West on the Tibet issue.
It’s less than five months since Yahoo! apologised at a US Congressional Committee to the family of jailed journalist Shi Tao. He is serving 10 years in a Chinese jail after Yahoo! gave authorities his personal email account information.
Shi Tao’s ‘crime’ was emailing to a US-based contact the Chinese Government’s instructions on how to report the 15th anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
He was convicted of “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities”. The information supplied by Yahoo! helped Chinese authorities secure his conviction.
Shi Tao remains in jail today.
Comments
Sophie Peer | Posted on 7 April 2008, 09:19AM | Report comment
Dear Shane
The Search for Freedom action is a real time search inside China we have chosen the image based search in order to convey the message to more people (who cannot read Chinese).
I would be interested to know, which Chinese word/s would result in images of protest and bloodshed on Google or Yahoo China?
There is so much more that these companies can be doing and it appears even the case of Shi Tao has not resulted in change. There is information on our site where we have explained the US Congress findings and welcomed Yahoo’s apology to families. However, we do strongly feel that is companies such as Yahoo! are going to live up to their own standards (for example Yahoo have a program called Yahoo! for Good) and the UN Global Norms for Business, then there needs to be changes in the way they operate in countries such as China.
Shane Anderson | Posted on 3 April 2008, 04:40PM | Report comment
I undrstnd the angst against Yahoo!, however I do feel that the uncensored Search For Freedom page really represent Yahoo! fairly.
Example Tiananmen square. We search Yahoo international with an English word while searching Yahoo China with a Chinese word. Try cutting and pasting the Chinese word “天安门” into your uncensored version of Yahoo. Amazing - no images of tanks rolling down the street. No images of bloodshed and protest.
The English version of Yahoo is equally capable of searching in either language but the fact is the English “media” takes more of an interest in Tiananmen square the event, where as the Chinese internet “media” sees it more as a location. Even though the Chinese population behind the “Great Firewall” are restricted from posting images of Tiananmen the event, there is a large enough diaspora to do that.
I am not denying the fact that Yahoo China is censored, but your display is not necessarily as balanced as it could be.