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July 22, 2005

Rebecca on doing business with China - and Newsweek's sloppiness

Newsweek's Web site runs an interview with Rebecca MacKinnon about the complicity of US tech companies in China's amazingly detailed suppression of the openness of the Net.

Rebecca also blogs about Newsweek's sloppy characterization of her. As she notes, it's not a big deal, except that the MSM keep telling us that they're better than bloggers because they have fact checkers, they're professionals, they get their facts right, etc. [Technorati tags: RebeccaMackinnon Newsweek China]

Posted by D. Weinberger at July 22, 2005 09:21 AM

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» Who Gets Their Facts Right? from Movable Theoblogical
David Weinberger comments on Rebecca MacKinnon's experience with a Newsweek article that bungled basic facts about her. Joho the Blog: Rebecca on doing business with China - and Newsweek's sloppiness Rebecca also blogs about Newsweek's sloppy character... [Read More]

Tracked on July 23, 2005 12:01 PM

Comments

Hi, if you're writing about this, you should link to the beginning of that newsweek article, not just that photo of rebecca mackinnon. there's a passage about the internet freedom legislation that everyone in the blogging community should all be fighting for. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8633318/site/newsweek/
thanks, Suzie Wahlsten

Posted by: suzie wahlsten | July 22, 2005 12:20 PM

Thanks, Suzie. The link wasn't just to her photo. If you scroll past it, you'll see the actual interview. Nevertheless, I have now linked to the first page of the article; the interview with Rebecca is on the second page.

Posted by: David Weinberger | July 22, 2005 12:34 PM

MacKinnon mentions that Newsweek called: apparently they had to cut some information from the article, and apparently they did not just cut out, but accidentally up too. To which somebody commented: "What, they have a pixel budget?"

That whole thing about having to scroll to get at the precious little content reminded me of a similar find Jeffrey Veen did a year ago: "Back in my days as a newspaper guy, we generally had a 60/40 split between ads and copy. What do you think pcmag.com's numbers are? I've highlighted the "story" I was after in the image below."

Posted by: Branko Collin | July 22, 2005 06:40 PM

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