A few months ago a friend emailed to say that he’d searched for me on twitter and found twenty accounts using my name, photo, and bio. I looked, and he was right: I was being impersonated. But here’s the thing: the actual twitter handle – the thing that starts with an @ – wasn’t some…
All posts in Media
Chinese want to leave China like Ecuadorians want to leave Ecuador.
Rich people are leaving China in droves. Just ask the South China Morning Post: “Exodus of the super-rich: half of China’s millionaires plan to leave country within five years.” Or the Wall Street Journal: “Almost Half of Wealthy Chinese Want to Leave.” Or Bloomberg: “Almost Half of Rich Chinese Consider Move, Barclays Says.” Seems convincing, no?…
Paul Krugman’s Communist Viagra Peddlers
Paul Krugman has seen the enemy, and that enemy is a Communist Viagra salesman. At least, that’s the message conveyed in the esteemed Nobel Prize winner’s Saturday blog post at the New York Times, “The Hacking of Michael Pettis.” For those who don’t know of him, Michael Pettis is a finance professor at Peking University,…
The NYT’s David Barboza on Mike Daisey and This American Life
On Friday, I posted a few thoughts on This American Life’s [TAL] retraction of its episode devoted to Mike Daisey’s The Agony & The Ecstasy of State Jobs. The full post is available here. In it, I point out that Daisey and his partisans have, in part, built a defense based upon citing The New York Times’…
My Take on Mike Daisey and Ira Glass.
In the week since Rob Schmitz’s outstanding debunking of Mike Daisey’s fabricated tales of Foxconn, I’ve been contemplating what – if anything I should write about this matter. Back in February, regular readers of this blog may recall, I appeared with Daisey (and two other guests) on To The Point with Warren Olney (downloadable here).…
Millinocket, Maine v. China’s Global Times (and its sketchiest editorialist) [UPDATED!]
[UPDATED 25 June: Okay, turns out that the update below needs an update. The Global Times site was, an emailer tells me, undergoing an upgrade, and links to some content were broken in the process – including links to Mattimore’s pieces. They are now restored.] [UPDATE 13 June: The Global Times editorials referenced in this…
The Bureau Chief’s Wife Doth Not Protest In Chinese.
A couple of quick points regarding the brouhaha over last week’s New York Times’ story suggesting that China is censoring the use of the word ‘protest’ – both English and Chinese – in phone conversations. My post debunking this odd anecdote can be found here; it’s generated far more attention – and emails, phone calls,…
Fact-checking the New York Times’ China Coverage [UPDATED]
[UPDATED at end of post.] On Monday, the New York Times ran a story on the tightening of internet controls in China that included this anecdote in the lede: BEIJING — If anyone wonders whether the Chinese government has tightened its grip on electronic communications since protests began engulfing the Arab world, Shakespeare may prove…
China Southern Got the South China Sea Memo
The other day, in the midst of a long flight on China Southern Airlines, I turned – as I like to do – to the in-flight magazine. Nihao is actually better than most and, after losing myself in a brief essay on the nature of time (I’m not kidding), I flipped to the back, and…
A Partial Defense of Amy Chua, but not her PR agency (and/or strategy).
My initial reaction to Amy Chua’s now-infamous Wall Street Journal piece, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” was to check the author’s bio in search of proof that I hadn’t just read a satire. The accompanying photo of a cross-armed Chua, armed with her duet-ing daughters, placed next to a list of childhood prohibitions (no sleepovers,…