China Eats Crow Over Faked Photo of Rare Antelope

[mike_stemberg]

<p><b>They Didn't Truly Run With a Train to Tibet..</b></p>

 

<p>By JANE SPENCER and JULIET YE<br>

February 22, 2008<br><br>

HONG KONG -- It turns out that train tracks in Tibet aren't where the antelope

play.</p>

 

<p>Earlier this week, Xinhua, China's state-run news agency, issued an unusual

public apology for publishing a doctored photograph of Tibetan wildlife

frolicking near a high-speed train.......</p>

 

<p>Read more from the Wall Street Journal:

<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120363429707884255.html?mod=yhoofront">

China Eats Crow Over Faked Photo of Rare Antelope,</a></p>

[Hector Javkin]

The Wall Street Journal has become such a rag. The fraud was committed by a Chinese photographer. The suspicion was made public by another Chinese photographer. More Chinese photographers confirmed the nature of the stitched photograph. I don't think a whole country eats crow over that. Anyway, I thought that story had been out for a while.

[Matt Laur]

Actually, Hector, any time you have a country that has a "state run new agency," which is the government publishing the news and is the entity that aplogized, then it <i>is</i> "China" talking. That's their chosen form of government, and that's one of the downsides of having your government choose, edit, and publish your daily news. I suspect we'll see a lot more of this as the Olympics approach.

[photobiscuits]

I don't understand. Why will you see more of this as the olympics approach?

[Matt Laur]

My observations of the way that China has been interacting with the rest of the world, especially in all ways related to PR and news-ish matters, is that they are trying to present the impression of a more transparent culture/government, given the scrutiny and coverage that will come with hosting the games. Because there is so much momentum behind their very NON-transparent way of generally doing things, these attempts can come across as rather clumsy sometimes. But they've shown a rather acute interest, just lately, in not allowing themselves to be portrayed as obfuscating, or covering up things that are - to the rest of the world - in plain sight. Apologizing for mis-steps like the publishing of fake photos in the government press are painless (for them) ways to demonstrate an interest in appearing open, and to try to offset their wretched reputation as censors of public discourse.

[dlw]

Matt, spot on assessment. I couldn't put it any better.

[Hector Javkin]

Actually, Matt, if an entire country "eats crow" every time someone there messes up, because its a state-owned business, then that'll happen constantly, and it's meaningless. In terms of China's population, anyway, it's a very small portion of crow for each person.

<p>

It's amazingly stupid of a photographer to try to get by with such a blatant Photoshopped fraud, but it's not emblematic of what the country is doing as a whole. If it could be shown that the photographer used a <i>pirated copy</i> of Photoshop, that would be eating crow or a black eye or whatever you want to call it for the whole country, because there is a pattern there.

[dlw]

Hector, that this particular photographer may be a rogue photographer is irrelevent. He is working for an official organ of the State. Therefore, what he does is sanctioned by the State. If his shoddy work got past the editors and official censors then what does that say about the State run news agency. It's a reflection on the State as a whole. Imagine the embarassment if an article critical of the governments' human rights record was published.

[Matt Laur]

<i>Actually, Matt, if an entire country "eats crow" every time someone there messes up, because its a state-owned business, then that'll happen constantly, and it's meaningless. In terms of China's population, anyway, it's a very small portion of crow for each person.</i>

<br><br>

The difference, though, Hector, is that China's government goes to constant (even, extremely repressive) measure to cultivate and present the impression of a collective society. They dictate what sort of communication is approved, and may be seen/heard/read by their citizens. If the people in that country don't <i>like</i> being referred to as a collective with a censoring, sanctioning singular government voice, then they need to finally get around to changing it (rather than assimilating places like Hong Kong INTO that way of existing, and insisting that Taiwan should also be subject to it). How representative the Chinese state-run press is of the actions and sensibilities of its people is neither here nor there. It's the government that they choose to have, and that government's assertion that it speaks for the people there (including through the news outlets that it controls) is part of that bargain.

[Hector Javkin]

Saying that a country the size of China is "eating crow" because of one photographer's mess-up, whether he's a government photographer or not, is completely out of proportion. We're paying much more attention to it in this thread than 99.9% of the Chinese population.

 

China has actually given up the idea of a collective society. It's got private factories all over. It's highly controlled in many areas of economic life, but it's not collective. I've seen them competing for sales.

 

Sometimes, photography is extremely important in world affairs. I don't see it there. It's a tempest in a teapot.

[Matt Laur]

<i>China has actually given up the idea of a collective society.</i>

<br><br>

Perhaps their population has. But the government that controls their media, blocks their internet access, and jails them for things they say ... and portrays what they do as being the will of the people, as a collective group - has NOT given up on that. Until the <i>people</i> of that country can actually express what they have done or want to do, it's absolutely reasonable to talk about it, and to use little things like this fake photograph as a catalyst. Why does it matter to photrographers in general? Because directly or indirectly vast amounts of the technology that we depend on to do what we do (like type and read these very messages) is manufactured in that country. The ebb and flow of communication - whether faked news from state agencies, or photo blogs from Hong Kong - do impact us, even in our little corner of interest.

[dlw]

The 99.9% of the Chinese population that arn't saying anything have no control over what is put out over they're news media. Totalitarian societies discourage public input. If China were truly a free society, there may well be public outrage over this photo. But alas. That China is opening they're markets, and hosting the olympics does not gloss over the fact they're still a totalitarian society. Freedom of expression, as we know it, does not exist. The State run media still speaks for the State as a collective regardless of liberalization of they're markets.

[Hector Javkin]

Matt, I disagree about the importance, although you did call it "little things like this." I am saying it is little. When the fraudulent photographs were published, I'm sure it wasn't the worst thing that the Chinese government did that week, or that day. I could describe a few things (e.g. support for Sudan) but I really want to keep this about photography. This photographic incident is less important and will have less consequence on policy, world relations, etc. than, say, the photography of the incidents at Abu Ghraib.

 

To take this in another direction, because I really don't want to argue, I have often enjoyed openly faked photographs. There is a newspaper in Argentina called Pagina 12 which will publish fake photos that don't constitute fraud, because everyone knows they're fake, something like photo cartoons. If a particularly despicable public figure is arrested, for example, they will put a photo combining the person's head with a suit of prison stripes, although the person has never worn prison stripes. The photo is emblematic of the story, like traffic signals that don't require words.

[markci]

For crying out loud -- who cares what a headline writer wrote? They're paid to keep it short and snappy.

 

What matters here is that China's "modernization" has created an environmental holocaust on a scale never before seen anywhere in the world. This is an Orwellian piece of propaganda meant to help obscure that reality.

[jack_lee8]

I don't know whether China eats crow, but I'd love to eat some of those antelope. Cover one of those suckers in a sweet, yet tangy hoisin sauce... my mouth's watering already.

[bernardwest]

There's been some bizarre things said in this post. Although I agree 100% with you Matt about this being a PR excercise, saying <i>"It's the government that they choose to have"</i> is a little naive. There's no choosing going on. You may well say, like a lot of armchair commentators say from the safety of the west, that the citizens, by not rising up against their goverment, are sanctioning their government. But we've all seen (and probably not seen a whole lot more!) how China deals with dissention. Change will come slowly. Ultimately it is the lure of the dollar that is responsible for the greatest change in China so far.

[eimages]

I remember a "Photo of the Week" on Photo.net, where the portrait of someone waiting at a temple was actually a compose of two photos. I think is eating crow statement is too self rightous.

[greglynch]

The world's leaders have chosen to ignore every not-so-subtle indication that the Chinese aren't exactly the definition of trustworthy. The cold war may be over, but to really get a hint of what these guys are really about, try this on for size. These are two snippets taken from the front page of The Wall Street Journal on the same day in January, 2001. They represent a perfect example of the two-faced hypocrisy that the PRC has gotten away with. When will we wake up and realize that these people will tell us what we want to hear in order to accomplish their agenda?

 

Snippet 1:

China intensified a crusade aimed at deterring protests by the Falun Dafa during Lunar New Year celebrations. Beijing warned that demonstrators would be harshly punished and urged the group's followers not to sacrifice themselves. Meanwhile, members of the sect are selling works by its leader at two market kiosks in Hong Kong amid warnings from Beijing that the city should not be used for "subversion".

 

Snippet 2:

China intends to ratify a key international human-rights pact within the next three months, officials told the U.N. secretary-general. The government is seeking to keep human-rights abuses from sinking Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympics. The treaty is one of two, which also has yet to be ratified, that lays down baseline guarantees for civil liberties often neglected in China.

 

This is great, isn't it? You just can't make this stuff up. Just for information, this Falun Dafa group (also known as Falun Gong) is a peaceful religious sect that practices meditation, self reliance and inner strength. Now, we can't have that, can we? Want more examples? Can you say "Tienanmen Square, June 4th, 1989"? Or how about Tibet, and the Dalai Lama? And if you think this is just old stuff, and that things have changed, think back only a few short months to the pet food recall and the multiple recalls of toys sold in the few months before Christmas last year. In my opinion, companies that deal with China deserve exactly what they get. The consumer, on the other hand do not, and that is why many of us have gone to double checking labels for the country of manufacture. Okay, off my soapbox.

[dave_lawson1]

Do not mistake a government for a people. Sadly, this is often the mistake that many regions make about the USA and they end up looking like radicals and jihad-ists (or may well be accussed of being so, based on the flavour (tangy hoisin sauce?) of the above.

 

As someone who travels to China regularly on business, I meet so many people who are very aware of the difference between the government reality and their personal reality. As a whole, the Chinese people are working tirelessly to change that and in the past 15 year the Chinese goverment is allowing the strings to loosen a little and see where it goes. In other words, working for an evolutionary process instead of a revolutionary process.

 

So, this week as I travel to Shanghai and Guangzhou, I will drink my Starbucks, chow down on a really good burger in an Irish pub owned by 3 Canadians and go for a stroll in the evening in one of China's largest cities, free of fear of robbery or other dire events.

 

I like China, but it scares me. Not the government, for at worst that's a temporary issue, but the incredible thirst for over 1 billion people for their own personal progress. It isn't the cheap, low quality merchandise you really need to worry about. It's the very high quality stuff that's starting to come from there that will be the downfall of the western industrialized economy.<div></div>

[markci]

<i>They represent a perfect example of the two-faced hypocrisy that the PRC has gotten away with. When will we wake up and realize that these people will tell us what we want to hear in order to accomplish their agenda?</i>

<p>

So you're saying they're becoming more like Western politicians all the time, eh?