The New York Times building has a special long hallway where it keeps pictures of reporters who have won pulitzer prizes. Its fun looking at how hair-styles have changed over the years. But most interesting of all is the picture from 1931, the picture of Walter Duranty, to which the Times has physically attached a large disclaimer.
My tour guide, Jenny 8. Lee, told me the story. In the 1930s Walter Duranty was one of America’s most famed reporters. As the New York Times’ Moscow correspondent, he filed vivid stories explaining the growth and meaning of Stalinism to the American people — its differences from Marxism, and the meaning of things like collectivism and the Five Year Plan.
There was just one problem. Relying on official sources, and subject to extensive censorship, Duranty’s stories soft-pedaled — or missed — the brutality of the Stalinist program. Duranty’s dispatches, available online, say things like
Stalin is giving the Russian people–the Russian masses, not Westernized landlords, industrialists bankers and intellectuals, but Russia’s 150,000,000 peasants and workers–what they really want namely, joint effort, communal effort… Stalin does not think of himself as a dictator or an autocrat, but as the guardian of the sacred flame, or ‘party line’ as the Bolsheviki term it, which for want of a better name must be labeled Stalinism.
Decades later the New York Times repudiated Duranty’s work. That’s the reason for the disclaimer attached to his picture, which explains that “Times correspondents and others have since largely discredited his coverage.”
Why discuss Duranty? I do so to get at one of the issues that my co-author Jack and I disagree about — namely, whether Google, Yahoo, and other companies should be doing business in China and other censorial countries. Jack, and many others, including the companies themselves, say that the results will be better for everyone: for the companies, for the Chinese people, and for the U.S. and Chinese economies.
I understand the position, and I generally agree with policies of engagement, not isolation. I think if I were in Google’s position, I’d be tempted too — particularly since the .com product is so lousy in China, and Google hates to deliver a second-rate product.
But my reasons for disagreement have less to do with consequence, and more to do with ethics — particularly the ethics of a media company. It seems to me its one thing to supply cars or wheat to a regime that may not live up to the highest standards. But what I think we’ve learned over the years is there’s something about media, and its constant tendency toward corruption that warrants more.
It is the risk captured in the Walter Duranty story, of becoming, without anyone really noticing, an organ of state power and a stooge to Stalinism. Today, what Duranty and search engines in China have this in common is this: They must lie to do their job. We’re not going to give you what would actually be the most popular result. And while some lying can be justified and is normal in the business world, over the long run it seems to me too corrupting for a company whose business is providing information.
One usual answer is that Chinese search engines will gladly take Google’s place. I understand the point but I don’t know what it justifies. If I work at Enron, there may be others willing to shred documents, but does that justify me doing so? Pravda also wrote stories like Duranty’s. But the difference was that people thought the NY Times was news, not propaganda. Similarly, people thought the purpose of search engines was to find out what’s really out there.
Internet content and search companies do not see themselves as media in the ethical sense of that word. They think of themselves as mere instruments, and thereby free from many of the duties that might attach to more traditional companies. I’m not sure that’s right.
Perhaps one day I will be proven wrong, and Google’s entrance into the chinese market will mark a turning point. Perhaps the companies will provide a wedge whereby U.S. government pressure reaches inside China more effectively. But I suspect over the next decade, or maybe decades from now, more will come out that makes colloboration seem as wrong now as it was in the 1930s.
I share your doubts, Tim, but perhaps in a broader way. There is something unsettling about the primary interface to the Web – search – being in exclusively private hands. Indeed, for most of the world there is something unsettling about the primary interface to the Web being in private American hands. The difference then is the answer – in the case of China, perhaps private American hands would offer greater freedom than the Chinese government. But in the case of America, it might be a place for national governments to play a role as a positive guarantor of freedom of information, by articulating the limits on private interests. I’m sure there would be a thunderous roar from the free-market libertarians, and there is a need to articulate the basis for intervention very clearly, but I think you are touching its core: there is something very special about media.
If that criticism is valid, then I think it also should be applied to Google’s “SafeSearch” and DMCA compliance policy.
I think that a distinction can be made between the actions of Google and Yahoo in China. Google is providing a censored search service. Yahoo has assisted in the arrest of at least four Chinese dissidents. The former is disagreeable but does not particularly affect the freedom of the Chinese people (who mostly use the censored Baiku search engine, not Google). The latter is anathema, and the way to avoid it is for companies to avoid any business that involves collecting personal information on citizens of repressive countries if their governments are in a position to demand that information.
> Its fun looking at how hair-styles have changed
> over the years. But most interesting of all is the
> picture from 1931
So you missed the most important point – what was Duranty’s hairstyle?
“There was just one problem. Relying on official sources, and subject to extensive censorship, Duranty’s stories soft-pedaled — or missed — the brutality of the Stalinist program.”
Kind of like current American media soft-pedals the news, relying on official sources and subject to significant editorial censorship?
I have a simple solution for Google in China:
In the USA, a results page for a search for ‘china’ has this at the top.
>Results 1 – 10 of about 2,070,000,000 for china [definition]. (0.22 seconds)
In China, it could just look like this:
>Results 1 – 10 of about 322 pages approved by censors (out of 2,070,000,000) for china [definition]. (0.22 seconds)
The continued presence of Google and Yahoo in China probably continue to have a corrosive effect on the regime there, even with the limitations these companies are forced to operate under, whereas Duranty was actively supporting Stalin.
It seems to me there’s a difference in moral standing between someone who, in service of his political ideals, chooses to lie to conceal the murder of 40,000,000 people, and someone who, under legal duress, reveals the identity of a handful of dissidents who are then jailed. If these two actions seem similar to you, perhaps you need to recalibrate your perceptions.
Response to Chip. The comparison is of course exaggerated, but I think for a different reason than the one you point to.
I understand Google’s position and how they got there. Yet it true that the company does, in the end, hide things, like Duranty, on behalf of the government. One difference is the scale — the Government purges, versus, say, crackdowns on peasants or memories of Tianamen. But the basic facts: hiding information pursuant to request, are similar. Maybe another difference is that people assumed Duranty was telling the truth, and they don’t assume that of a search engine.
The whole question is whether you think search engines have ethical duties like journalists — I guess we don’t know the answer.