Shi Tao has been given another press freedom award. He’s serving a ten-year prison sentence for leaking state secrets - a description of the central government’s instructions to the media on what not to print or broadcast around the anniversary of the June 4 crackdown in Beijing.
But here’s what I wonder:
Everyone at CCTV received [state secret deleted] this year. I have no intention of publishing this or sending it to anyone. But it would simply be a matter of typing a few words. What would happen if I did? How is it possible for such an unimportant foreigner as myself to be in possession of state secrets that are so important, a man is in jail for revealing them? I didn’t look for them, or ask for them. No one surreptitiously slipped them to me in a dark alley. The instructions were sent to everyone.
If it really is a state secret that the media is not supposed to talk about certain things, then it deserves an award in itself - The Worst Kept Secret in the World. Everyone, everywhere knows it.
So why is Shi Tao in prison?
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