Cheating CNN caught by Google cache
In
the blog by Rebecca MacKinnon, the following interesting story was mentioned:
As Roland Soong points out, CNN.com has quietly gone and replaced the photo in the original story with a new version that includes the mob violence in the background. But of course the old version still lives in the Google cache.
He writes: "This is a self-inflicted wound. If CNN believed that it
was right in the first place, then it should have stuck to that
position. Instead, it surrendered quietly. Not only did this not
appease the Chinese netizens, it only made it worse."
For those who are not familiar of the background, here is a quick summary: In reporting the recent riot at the Tibet Autonomous Region of China, CNN cropped an image, removing Tibetan protesters throwing stones at the trucks. Some believed that
CNN tried to intentionally mislead the viewers by cropping the image such that (with the mob violence in the background is omitted) people seemed to be fleeing away when they saw the trucks. CNN claimed that they are
not. Then
somebody pointed out that, if CNN was right about it, it would not have silently replaced the original photo on its website. The story with a new (complete) photo is
here. The old version, which CNN wants to hide, remained accessible via
Google cache. (Not sure how long will the cache remain unchanged before the next update, but
a screenshot of the cache was found
here posted by a blogger. )
MacKinnon also
pointed out that
"many of the
examples of Western media anti-China bias
posted at anti-cnn.com hone in on a series of agency photos that ran in
various Western news outlets which were mislabeled as Chinese police
arresting Tibetan protesters, when they are actually Nepalese or Indian
police arresting exiled Tibetan protesters. "
While
RTL news in Germany has apologized for mis-reporting Nepali police
violence as Chinese police violence, many are still waiting to see how cnn will react to regain the trust of its viewers.