Benjamin Joffe-Walt, Novelist

Benjamin Joffe-Walt wrote in the Guardian on October 10, 2005:

'They beat him until he was lifeless'

How democracy activist in China's new frontline was left for dead after a brutal attack by a uniformed mob

......

The last time I [Benjamin Joffe-Walt] saw Lu Banglie, he was lying in a ditch on the side of the street - placid, numb and lifeless - the spit, snot and urine of about 20 men mixing with his blood, and running all over his body ......

We arrived on the outskirts of Taishi, just as the dirt roads start. There were 30 to 50 men - angry, inebriated, bored men. Most looked like thugs. Some wore military camouflage uniform. Some wore blue uniforms with badges on the shoulders, and one guy had a greyish-mauve uniform with a walkie-talkie. Our taxi driver, who we had hired randomly in a neighbouring village, was called out by the thugs. They screamed at him: "What the fuck are you doing here?"

He knew nothing. He came back in and screamed at us. "Fuck all of you, look now you've gotten me into trouble."

We told him to reverse but by that time it was already too late, the car was encircled. "Don't go out!," I screamed, telling everyone to lock their doors. I called a colleague on my mobile, asked him to stay on the phone with me.

The men outside shouted among themselves and those in uniform suddenly left. Those remaining started pushing on the car, screaming at us to get out. They pointed flashlights at us, and when the light hit Mr Lu's face, it was as if a bomb had gone off. They completely lost it. They pulled him out and bashed him to the ground, kicked him, pulverised him, stomped on his head over and over again. The beating was loud, like the crack of a wooden board, and he was unconscious within 30 seconds.

They continued for 10 minutes. The body of this skinny little man turned to putty between the kicking legs of the rancorous men. This was not about teaching a man a lesson, about scaring me, about preventing access to the village; this was about vengeance - retribution for teaching villagers their legal rights, for agitating, for daring to hide.

They slowed down but never stopped. He lay there - his eye out of its socket, his tongue cut, a stream of blood dropping from his mouth, his body limp, twisted. The ligaments in his neck were broken, so his head lay sideways as if connected to the rest of his body by a rubber band ......

I shamelessly begged. I prayed. I offered them money. I tried to smile at them. Random people came up to Mr Lu and kicked him in the head, clearing their nose of snot on his body, spitting on him, peeing on him, showing off for each other. I had no idea what to do.

I stood there, sweating, my hands ripping my hair out, just staring at the blood all over the man who had risked his life to help me.

An ambulance came. The medic got out, checked his pulse and left. Then it hit me: I'd done absolutely nothing to save Mr Lu. I stood there watching. I'm trained as a medic, and I did nothing to save Mr Lu. Absolutely nothing. They put us in a car, told us we were being taken for interrogation. On the way the men joked, laughed and we shook. (Emphasis added by Letters from China)

I should imagine that most readers would draw the inference that Mr Lu died in Taishi Village after reading Benjamin Joffe-Walt's account.

Yes, But
1. Professor Ai Xiaoming was quoted as saying that Lu had been sent back to Hubei Province and he was alive (Hong Kong In-Media) (7:00 p.m., October 10).

2. Mr Anti, a Chinese journalist, wrote that he had obtained Lu's response. Lu was slightly injured. (about 12 a.m., 11 October)

Red Herring
Unlawful violence, whether it was backed by the government, cannot be tolerated. But cooking up a news story is almost equally regrettable.

Benjamin Joffe-Walt exaggerated Lu's injuries, intentionally or negligently. The exaggeration is not only a blatant breach of journalists' ethics, but a great disservice to the villagers who have been pushing for a decent local government. Mr Joffe-Walt's story has become a red herring diverting attention from the core issue: the country's grassroots democracy.

"What I can tell you is that what's going on in Taishi is perhaps the most significant grassroots social movement China has seen since the Cultural Revolution," wrote Mr Joffe-Walt.

Ego blinded the gentleman.

UPDATE:
Today (October 11, 2005), the Guardian's headline reads "Activist found alive after beating by mob". There is no correction, let alone apology. The only clue: " ...... But [Lu Banglie] said only his arm was visibly wounded." You can find that line in the second-last paragraph.

UPDATE 2: October 12, 2005:
The Peking Duck, an opinion leader in China blogosphere, wrote "In defense of the Benjamin Joffe-Walt report from Taishi": "The knee-jerk reaction to [Joffe-Walt'] misunderstanding of the extent of Lu's injuries, while wholly predictable, is a chilling reminder of how sensible discussion and enquiry can be subverted by exploiting emotional trigger points." The Peking Duck endorsed Asia Pundit's "A defense of Benjamin Joffe-Walt", which seems to focus on the issue of protecting the source.

I think Sun Bin's response in the Asia Pundit represents what I think: "…… the bigger controversy is about the 'exaggeration' or 'inaccurate description' of Joffe-Walt's story. People worries it is going to tarnish the credibility of the only source of unbiased reporting to audience inside China. (It is not going to change critically minded readers overseas who [have] access to various points of view. It is the readers inside China that they are concerned about)"

And see what Lin said in the Peking Duck: "For Chinese, this kind of report could totally ruin their trust of certain western media. I still remember in 1989, VOA reported tens of thousands of students died after the massacre. I was astonished at that time even if I was just a little kid. However later I knew the death toll is in hundreds. Since then I lost the confidence in VOA. They usually just report the new number and don't even say sorry for that."

With respect to the Peking Duck, I do not think it is fair to write people who criticise Benjamin Joffe-Walt off.

UPDATE 3: The Guardian, October 12, 2005

Mr Lu told Reuters that he repeatedly vomited while being driven the 900 miles to his home city and that his eyes had been swollen and his vision blurred. However his injuries were not as extensive as first reported. Although he was in pain from his neck, it was not broken and his eye did not come out of its socket.

The main source of suffering, he said, was the throbbing in his head. A CT scan at a local hospital yesterday indicated there was no damage to the brain. (Emphasis added by Letters from China)

UPDATE 4: October 13, 2005
It is accepted by both the defenders and the critics of Benjamin Joffe-Walt / the Guardian that the journalist was horrified to witness the assault of Lu. But does it justify the exaggeration / inaccuracy? Some defenders say yes.

But I think such exoneration cannot withstand scrutiny.

Let us, for the sake of analysis, assume that Mr Joffe-Walt was so horrified that he was unable to write an accurate account of the events (and able to invent a sensational story). We do not have a mind-reader. Nor do we have Mr Joffe-Walt's testimony. We make the assumption to avoid fruitless speculation.

But that is not the end of the story.

Mr Joffe-Walt wrote a passionate first-hand account. The editors gave the green light to the account. All parties concerned knew or ought to have known that Mr Joffe-Walt was horrified and he was a young / inexperienced journalist. They were willfully blind to the real risk of inaccuracy. The intentional risk-taking alone deserves criticism.

UPDATE 5: October 18, 2005
The readers' editor of the Guardian responded on October 17 (via Simon World):

...... The initial report containing what were quickly exposed as gross errors and exaggerations was written by the Guardian's newly appointed Shanghai correspondent, Benjamin Joffe-Walt. Mr Joffe-Walt is 25. His main experience as a journalist has been gained in six months working for a South Africa newspaper, This Day, until it ceased publication in November 2004, and an overlapping period as a stringer, a freelance correspondent, for a British newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph. For the latter he filed stories from all over Africa, including Darfur. He has won several awards: young journalist of the year from the Foreign Press Association in London, in November last year, and the CNN African print journalist of the year award in June this year. He has been runner-up in two other awards. He started work for the Guardian on September 1 ......

In Shanghai again [back from Taishi Village, Guangdong] 24 hours later Joffe-Walt filed his first-person eye-witness account. Indeed, working against a tight deadline on Sunday for Monday's edition, he filed 3,500 words in a graphic stream-of-consciousness narrative in which, in the greatly cut-down version that was published, he said: "My head was spinning. I was in a mixed state of shock at what had happened to Mr Lu and utter fear for my life."

He filed only an hour before deadline, which left little time for interaction with the desk. He was not specifically questioned by the desk in London about some of the details in his description. He was not asked how far he was from Mr Lu when the latter was being beaten. He was not asked how clearly he could see the things he was reporting he had seen. At the same time Joffe-Walt failed to communicate to the desk the condition he was in then and was still in at the time of writing. He was still convinced at that time that Mr Lu was dead ......

I have interviewed Joffe-Walt, mainly in two sessions, for a total of more than three hours and I am sure that it is right to stop short of the wholesale condemnation of him that the matter may appear to invite. Joffe-Walt having expressed repeated apologies for what he had done and its implications for the Guardian, and indeed for the pro-democracy movement in China, said: "This was a situation in which I honestly, for the first time in my life, thought I would die."

As a result of what he told me I urged him to contact Mark Brayne of the Dart Centre ...... a former BBC correspondent, now a psychotherapist specialising in journalism and trauma (Joffe-Walt had already been examined at a clinic at the suggestion of the Guardian). Exceptionally, I had Joffe-Walt's permission to talk to Mark Brayne, with the latter's agreement, after their interview. Mr Brayne has no doubt that the situation, the mixture of fear and shame with which Joffe-Walt witnessed Mr Lu being beaten while he himself was locked in the car, contributed to a state of traumatic distress which he was still experiencing when he wrote his account. Mr Brayne said, "The intensity was quite unusual but in Benjamin's particular context it does make sense." In this state, he said, Joffe-Walt had lost touch with reality ......

Comments

[Mark Anthony Jones]

I agree with you here. Yesterday I was sickened, quite literally, after reading Joffe-Walt's report, and I did indeed assume him for dead, and was even inspired to write an article about it on my blog
(f r e e w e b s . c o m / f l o a t i n g w a t e r s).

This morning I find myself relieved to know that Mr Lu is alive and well, and with only minor injuries, and I have just finished writing a postscript to my article of yesterday, in which I too express my disappointment in The Guardian's Benjamin Joffe-Walt - who as you imply, should have chosen a career as a novelist rather than becoming a journalist.

Mark Anthony Jones

[Letters from China]

Benjamin Joffe-Walt spent three weeks in February as a "human shield" in Baghdad. (Newsweek via MSNBC; URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068501/site/newsweek/).

Perhaps the Taishi Village reminded him of the days in Baghdad? Standing up to the injustice?

[Mark Anthony Jones]

Yes, I can certainly understand your cynicism towards Joffe-Walt's - towards his "blinded ego" and self-portrayal.

Mark Anthony Jones

[Zhang]

I don't know how western society deems Guardian, as a respectable paper or just another [tabloid]. (My default News source is New York Times.) But this time I was fooled, greatly, since I don't know what kind of a paper is Guardian, I take it for granted that Anti will not take some tabloid as a serious source of information, I believed it was true.
And I have a sleepless night [yesterday], contemplating our nation's fate.(I admit Taishi is a shame to our democracy.)

Now I know who Guardian is.

[Letters from China]

The Guardian is a left-wing British "broadsheet".

I think Jim Hacker, the "Prime Minister of the United Kingdom", was about right:

-The Times is read by the people who run the country;
-The Daily Mirror is read by the people who think they run the country;
-The Guardian is read by the people who think they ought to run the country;
-The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
-The Independent is read by the people who don't know who runs the country but are sure they're doing it wrong;
-The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
-The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country;
-The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be run;
-The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who still think it is their country;
-And the Sun's readers don't care who runs the country providing she has big tits.

[sun bin]

Asking for responsible media discipline does not mean endorsing the local gov't point of view, nor does this mean undermining the foreign journalist effort. It is precisely the opposite. It is our great respect for neutral and unbiased coverage that leads to our demand for the highest standard from the foreign journalists.

The peking ducks have very muddled minds and distorted logic. We all know where they stand, at least a few of them have certain agenda to push. and btw, when did they become "opinion leader" in anywhere other than among the neo-conservatives who fantasize that china will attack USA someday, or that "billion of Chinese want to wipe Japan off the map"?

[Letters from China]

SB: "When did [the Peking Ducks] become 'opinion leader' in anywhere other than among the neo-conservatives ……"

How interesting, when Richard the Peking Duck always says he is a liberal.

His posts on Benjamin Joffe-Walt are in a muddle and disappointing.

[Mark Anthony Jones]

Richard's moral compass is all over the place to be frank. He has no ideologically or morally consistent view on anything.

I do not want to be seen here to be merely trying to exploit your site to advertise my own, but yesterday I wrote an article, posted in the "China Articles" section of my blog, in which I view what is happening in Taishi village in a more positive light, by looking at the broader picture. I'd be interested to know what others think of my views on this issue. The way I see, what we see in Taishi is democracy in action.

Mark Anthony Jones

[Letters from China]

All are encouraged to "advertise" their relevant posts in the LfC (except, perhaps, those who are selling ch3@p Vi@gr@ on their websites).