Chinese authorities conduct unannounced 'inspections' of Bloomberg News bureaus

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/12/02/chinese-authorities-conduct-unannounced-inspections-of-bloomberg-news-bureaus/

by danso • 13 years ago

53 18 13 years ago

finance.fortune.cnn.com

brokentone2• 13 years ago

It's an easy reaction to immediately condemn China, but is the US any different with the AP and Fox News (naming James Rosen as a co-conspirator) Phone Tapping, and NSA everything?

dak1• 13 years ago

1) Yes, yes it very much freaking is

2) That has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the story

3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

TomSawyer• 13 years ago

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

zevyoura• 13 years ago

This is an outright display of displeasure from the government, designed to intimidate. While I don't endorse the activities of the US gov't that you mention, they're not meant for this sort of blatant intimidation (or else they wouldn't be so secretive about them).

fiatmoney• 13 years ago

They are far more effective at private intimidation or blackmail, which the target has every incentive to keep quiet. For instance, NSA monitoring of porn habits.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

James Rosen was involved (not charged) in a criminal investigation about the leak of counter-proliferation intelligence from a US nuclear weapons lab. I can understand where people are coming from when they suggest that leaks about NSA surveillance do more good than harm. I cannot understand that mentality about our efforts to stop places like North Korea from selling nuclear weapons to random countries around the world.

brokentone2• 13 years ago

He was named as a co-conspirator, that's about as involved as you can get other than being charged.

danso• 13 years ago

Yes, as someone who has worked at a couple of U.S. journalism outlets, I would say there's a big difference between between the Risen-type of prosecutions and "inspections" by the local officials.

One outright difference is the potential for prior review. James Risen, AFAIK, entered his current legal situation quite a time after the publishing of his story...and this seems to pretty much always be the case with journalism that ends up on in a courtroom. If the NSA had been using its full wiretapping powers to "inspect" Risen, a well known national affairs reporter, then it would've not gotten to the probe stage, or to the publication stage.

Risen of course is facing an intrusive probe, but that is ostensibly part of a post-publication investigation to root out the leakers who are ostensibly breaking laws.

What is happening to Bloomberg, and what purportedly happens to typical Chinese news outlets, is a preventive, chilling action...and while you may argue that the thought of being targeted in a prosecutor's probe can be just as chilling...I'd argue that it's the frequency and the seeming arbitrariness of drop-in inspections is what makes the difference.

And so why doesn't the NSA or even just the local police station doing occasional inspections? Because even if that were legal (which it probably isn't), the public penalty for such actions is so high that most U.S. agencies seem content to duke it out post-publication. I don't know how things are exactly in China, but I think you have to accept that not all intrusions on journalists' work are equal out of principle.

Note: there's obviously selection bias at work here...presumably, we don't hear about the journalism projects that are killed pre-publication, and we only know about the ones like Risen who sneaked their stories through. But I have to seriously doubt there's a significant number of secretly squelched stories, because again, the risk of an agency doing so is that it blows up in their faces, a la Barbara Streisand.

cscurmudgeon• 13 years ago

Do you seriously think that something like the NSA leak could happen in China? :D

walshemj2• 13 years ago

Possibly but the consequences for the leaker and the newspapers publishing it would be much much more severe.

I doubt that any Chinese based news source would publish in the way that the NYT and the Guardian have - it would be effectively committing corporate suicide as it would be shut down

ChuckMcM• 13 years ago

I was thinking of GCHQ 'inspecting' the Guardian and having them destroy hard drives. Same modus operandi as far as I can tell.

walshemj2• 13 years ago

Bloomberg did not have Chinese state secrets in their possession.

nosferatus• 13 years ago

trust but verify !

jokoon• 13 years ago

mmmmh have you check the chinese constitution, or chinese laws ?

yep.

LekkoscPiwa• 13 years ago

so these "journalists" sold souls to devil to be able to report on devil and at the end of the day devil will get their souls anyway and they won't get any reporting done too. Not to have a cake and not to eat it too -- one would like to say!

Journalists are there to report. These guys are in trouble because they forgot about it what their jobs are all about.

Chinese authorities conduct unannounced 'inspections' of Bloomberg News bureaus

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