A very interesting discussion here:
poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=82199
This past weekend, at the most recent reunion, a simmering debate over what some US journalists see as a redefinition of the Neiman Foundation’s basic mission exploded into a firestorm over a plan by Nieman curator Bob Giles to host a group of 40 Chinese communist officials next month in Boston to help them deal with the media manipulation while covering the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Wonder if this story will ever get reported here in Taiwan? In any of the local papers…Wonder if the Washington Post or Boston Globe or UK Guardian will write about this.
“There is a real danger that the Nieman name will be attached to what amounts to an exercise in public relations for the Chinese government in how to manipulate the western press,” she said. “You have to find ways to engage the Chinese government but this really does not seem to be the way…”
Jun-tao Wang, a 1996 mainland Chinese Nieman fellow, made an eloquent argument against the Harvard proposal on the grounds that it is an inappropriate role for the Nieman Foundation.
“The Chinese communists know that democracy is their enemy…They want to know how to deal with the press…They want to know how to lie to the press,” he said. [Wang is now working on his Ph.D. at Columbia University.]
Boston Globe editorial against this program
boston.com/news/globe/editor … hina_deal/
New York Times report on this: