Several articles have appeared in the newspapers today containing suggestions that the blog of a British protester (who was part of a group that unfurled Free Tibet flags outside the Olympic stadium) has been altered to read more sympathetically towords the Chinese authorities. The Guardian’s article is here, and the Telegraph’s is here.
The “blog” in question seems in fact to be an account by one of the protesters, Lucy Fairbrother, of a trip she made to Tibet written for the website What About Tibet?. No date is given in the article, but the link to it from the site’s “travel” section says 2004.
The Guardian and the Telegraph both quote Lucy’s “family” as the source of the allegations of blog tampering. The Guardian says
“The posting, A Short Stay in Tibet, begins with a description of life there and turns into a polemic against China, but appears to have been clumsily changed to read more sympathetically. It reads: “I admit that I have been under much influence of militant Free Tibet organisations back home. What China is doing now, and what China HAS done, are so different, and I am angry with myself for not realising the distinction before now.”
Extract from ‘A Short Stay in Tibet’
Her mother, Linda, a TV journalist, said: “This certainly sounds unlike anything Lucy would have written. I saw the original and I certainly have no memory of anything like that figuring in it. It doesn’t sound like her phraseology. She read classics, she writes beautifully and this doesn’t sound at all like her style, quite apart from her sentiments. I would imagine it’s been done today. Students for a Free Tibet have in the past had tampering with their own internal emails.”"
If the Chinese authorities really have tampered with the article, then they have also altered its appearance in Google’s cache (dated as having been indexed on 4th July, long before the protest took place), and also in the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine, which gives a date of indexing of 19th October 2006. If true, this is evidence of a big conspiracy – the Chinese authorities have agents or sleepers in Google’s offices, and also in those of the organisation that runs the Wayback machine.
My prediction, however, is that somewhere along the line, someone’s got mixed up, and that no alterations have been made. Neither the Guardian nor the Telegraph mentions that they checked the cached versions of the article. I wonder if they did? If it does turn out to be a mistake, will either of them publish a retraction?
