The Same Day The NY Times Praised Google For Standing Up To China, The Times Paid Singapore's Leaders

from the parallels dept

Two big stories recently were Google’s decision to effectively leave China and the NY Times’ agreement to pay Singapore’s leaders for daring to refer to the fact that a father and son pair had both been prime minister as a “dynasty.” The Times’ public editor is now comparing the two situations — and while he notes that Singapore is an important market for many media publications, and from a business perspective, the decision makes sense, he seems to suggest that Google got this right, while the Times got it wrong:

Google faced a similar painful dilemma in China. With potentially billions of dollars at risk, it stuck to its principles, and The Times applauded editorially. I think Google set an example for everyone who believes in the free flow of information.

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Companies: google, nytimes

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Comments on “The Same Day The NY Times Praised Google For Standing Up To China, The Times Paid Singapore's Leaders”

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12 Comments
Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Google embarked on a generational plan to change China.

They had to be around long enough to influence the people who live there. More importantly, the up and coming generation of “makers”

Then they made a huge point over what’s wrong in China.

Then they punctuated the sentence with an exclamation point, and walked.

It’s now up to those people who they influenced to change their own country.

I think this is all going according to a very brilliant plan. In fact, I know it is.

The “attacks” are just a convenient excuse to execute the next part of the plan.

(I mean, Chinese hackers have been attacking US sites since got their first IP address. Get real.)

Idealism is good and necessary. But idealism should only inform realism, not replace it. We need China to change. For real.

enrolled agent exam preparation (user link) says:

Re: Re: Re:

You need China to change… but, change what? Or, change into what? A single company won’t be able to reform a country that is so bound to tradition. Do you ever wonder why, even if it has the biggest population on Earth, China still seems as timid as a baby, albeit a giant baby? It’s because their government has a solid grasp on their traditions, on their governance over the people. Google won’t change any of that. Heck, I’d bet my house if even half of the Chinese population knows what Google is. Let alone know its intentions, regal or childish.

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