As part of the US Department of Justice’s investigation into News Corp, allegations have surfaced that the Wall Street Journal has been bunging senior Chinese sources in return for their co-operation. It’s allegedly ‘relationship bribery’, ie travel, banqueting and so forth rather than straight out cash payments. Dow Jones says these allegations surfaced at the time of Bo Xilai’s downfall last year and are a means used by persons connected with Beijing to discredit its reporting.
Maybe, though that wasn’t a story Beijing seemed particularly keen to suppress. I believe it was the WSJ which reported on Bo Guagua’s purported activities in New York so it might have been one of the family or someone from the complex of interests that surrounded it. Or maybe it was Beijing. Or maybe the WSJ were bunging a valuable source. We’re never really going to know.
What this reminds me of a bit is the campaign last year by various Chinese dissident/overseas media to discredit David Barboza’s New York Times reports on Wen Jiabiao’s family business on the grounds that Barboza was supposedly given a dossier on these by ‘leftist’ interests. Overall, I think the story may illustrate the way in which some overseas media have become semi-conscious players in internal Chinese politics through heavy reliance on supposedly highly placed anonymous sources for interpretation and framing of government policy and decisions, in the absence of credible official discourse. As players, they’re at risk of getting played and also at risk of attempts to discredit their reporting by people with interests and preferences contrary to those of existing sources.
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