The worst kept secret in the world

June 5, 2007

Shi Tao has been given another press freedom award. He’s serving a ten-year prison sentence for leaking state secrets - a description of the central government’s instructions to the media on what not to print or broadcast around the anniversary of the June 4 crackdown in Beijing.

But here’s what I wonder:

Everyone at CCTV received [state secret deleted] this year. I have no intention of publishing this or sending it to anyone. But it would simply be a matter of typing a few words. What would happen if I did? How is it possible for such an unimportant foreigner as myself to be in possession of state secrets that are so important, a man is in jail for revealing them? I didn’t look for them, or ask for them. No one surreptitiously slipped them to me in a dark alley. The instructions were sent to everyone.

If it really is a state secret that the media is not supposed to talk about certain things, then it deserves an award in itself - The Worst Kept Secret in the World. Everyone, everywhere knows it.

So why is Shi Tao in prison?

3 Comments »

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  1. Because you’re a white foreigner and he’s Chinese. I published the Taiwan reporting guidelines from China Daily on my blog (http://leakingstatesecrets.blogspot.com/2005/08/typical-article.html) when I was there, not thinking that people like Shi Tao got ten years for that sort of thing. One thing all the reports on Shi Tao forget to mention is that not only do Chinese not know about his case, they wouldn’t care even if they did. The typical comments I heard from Chinese were “He broke the law of China and made China look bad so he must be punished.”

    Comment by michael — June 6, 2007 @ 6:37 pm

  2. Hey Rob… I had no idea this was you! Looks like we both got new blogs going at roughly the same time. It was actually you that hooked me on ESWN and got the ball rolling. Anyway, if you are free, we should hook up for a beer one of these days.

    Comment by Zhongnanhai — June 19, 2007 @ 12:45 pm

  3. Why not blog for money - sell your stuff to an agency?

    Comment by sarah — June 21, 2007 @ 8:54 pm

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