Wall Street Journal Chinese denies self-censorship

Earlier today, we broke the news that Reuters Chinese and WSJ Chinese were practicing self-censorship concerning the Hong Kong democracy protests. While we have not yet heard back from Reuters, we have received vehement denial from WSJ Chinese editor Li Yuan and WSJ editor-in-chief Gerard Baker via Twitter.

Li Yuan asked via Twitter whether we at GreatFire.org were aware that WSJ had been blocked in China for four months (the implication being that because the website is already blocked, they have no reason to self-censor). It appears that she did not take the time to read our report at all before commenting.

@niubi If you don't read Chinese, call me to check your facts. ChineseWSJ has been blocked in China for 4 months; @GreatFireChina Do U know?

— Li Yuan (@LiYuan6) September 29, 2014

Here’s the quote from our report which is the second paragraph of the article:

In November 2013, China blocked WSJ Chinese and Reuters Chinese for a few days. The act was meant to intimidate both companies and to warn them that they have to keep their content in line with Beijing. WSJ Chinese was subsequently blocked for good in June 2014 after the site posted multiple news items related to the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests on the website’s front page. Reuters Chinese did not post anything related to the June anniversary and remained unblocked.

You may recall that Bloomberg has been accused of curbing articles that might anger China after their site was blocked in China and the company received pressure from the Chinese government over their business operations in the country.

The main purpose of our website GreatFire.org is to test what internet websites are being blocked in China. We automatically test the Great Firewall of China and update a list of blocked websites in real time. We also keep an eye on developments related to censorship in China.

Li Yuan also provided a list of articles about Hong Kong and featured one article covering the protest. That one article was published after our original report. 

@GreatFireChina Please run a correction/clarification or you can retweet my previous tweet with photo. pic.twitter.com/ZzLKKKhZdK

— Li Yuan (@LiYuan6) September 29, 2014

We have updated our original report to reflect this:

Update on Sept 29, 8:30 AM Hong Kong time:

After we published our article which was widely reposted, Wall Street Jounal Chinese posted itsfirst news covering the actual protest, dated September 29 at 7:54AM Hong Kong time. Because WSJ Chinese published the "news" about 24 hours* after the start of the protest and its first English language report, we believe that WSJ Chinese is trying to save its image after being publicly called out for self-censorship. Still, we welcome the change. At least WSJ Chinese readers now know about the protest in Hong Kong - better late than never.  In comparison, Reuters Chinese has not posted any news covering the protest even now.

*SCMP started to live report the protest on September 28 at 8AM. WSJ's report in English was dated September 28 at 6:08AM. (Hong Kong time).

The remaining stories that Li referenced do not actually cover the protest itself. For example, the first article on the list is dated September 9th and is titled “Occupy Central planned for October”.

Gerard Baker, editor-in-chief of WSJ (Not WSJ Chinese) also tweeted about our accusations.

@JamesFallows @iandenisjohnson Oh I see! That justifies the two of you taking to Twitter to so casually impugn our integrity, doesn't it?

— Gerard Baker (@gerardtbaker) September 29, 2014

@JamesFallows @iandenisjohnson Rather than, say, checking to see whether, just for example, our website has actually been blocked in China?

— Gerard Baker (@gerardtbaker) September 29, 2014

Again, we believe that we are experts when it comes to the Great Firewall of China. In fact, WSJ itself has regularly quoted us as an anti-censorship activist group in China. Baker should also at least read our original report before denying it.

Some users and internal WSJ staff have suspected that a shortage of staff on a Sunday before a holiday might be the cause of delaying translation. The time gap between the English article, attributed to ISABELLA STEGER, PRUDENCE HO and CHESTER YUNG, and the Chinese article, attributed to the same reporters, is 25 hours and 46 minutes. This time delay might be reasonable for average stories but for news that grabbed headlines around the world, on virtually every media outlet, this delay is simply unbelievable.

In addition, in the past, when WSJ Chinese has been translating important news, they usually post a short blurb together with the comment “detailed report will follow”. We have provided an example below. According to Google, there are 83,500 incidences where WSJ Chinese has posted the translation of the title of the story and posted content in a separate article when the translation is complete. Is this story really not more important that 83,500 others?

We want WSJ Chinese to explain why it takes more than 25 hours to translate a sentence into Chinese or give any other reason why a report is being delayed despite the fact that it is the most important news item of the day.

WSJ Chinese has publicly denounced self-censorship and we applaud their stance on the matter. But we also hope that their actions echo their sentiment - in this case, they do not. Reuters China has remained silent on the self-censorship issue, which is self-censorship in itself.

Reuters China posted its first report about the Hong Kong protest on Monday, September 29 at 11:30am, 30 hours later than WSJ English’s first report.

Even so, we welcome the addition of this Chinese language content. We’ve again reached out to both media publications to hear their side of the story. If this is truly an issue about being understaffed, then this raises serious questions about the management of these two news organizations. Your peers all published timely stories about the Hong Kong protests in Chinese. Advertisers will likely notice - they know that breaking news drives eyeballs.

We also know that journalists are under enormous amounts of stress and we respect the fact that both WSJ and Reuters have reporters on the ground, putting themselves in danger to report this story. But why make such an effort if the fruits of that labor become evident more than 24 hours after the event for the audience that deserves to hear this story the most? Here's hoping that your best Chinese language coverage of the Hong Kong protests is yet to come.

Very proud of my colleague Tyrone Siu who took this amazing photo of HK protesters being tear gassed on Sunday. pic.twitter.com/jUGkGfAeww

— Venus Wu (@wu_venus) September 29, 2014