Lawsuit threat over Baidu ‘poisoned milk’ scandal
p2pnet news view Politics | P2P:- Chinese online community site Tianya.com may be sued by a local journalist for allegedly deleting posts describing his reporting on the poisoned milk scandal in which Google-type search engine Baidu.com is named.
As of August last year, Google had a stake in Tianya.com, says Alacra Store.
Baidu, in which Google also once had an interest, has been, “slammed by angry netizens who believe the company censored news on the sensitive topic in exchange for payment from dairy companies,” says the South China Morning Post, quoted by the Wall Street Journal.
“Baidu acknowledged that it had been contacted by companies but denies that it took money,” says the story, going on to quote the company as declaring:
“Baidu has been approached by a few dairy producers. However, we have flat out refused to screen out negative news. Baidu respects the truth and our search results reflect that commitment.”
The, “mainstream media have picked up the story of China search engine Baidu’s involvement in the poisoned milk scandal,” said p2pnet, last week, in what may have been the first report in the West of the Baidu allegations.
In a comment post from China on our follow-up, p2pnet reader Deep Throat responded to an earlier Wall Street Journal story which said, “There is no proof that Baidu played a part in concealing the discovery,” stated »»»
If the Wall Street Journal had a better finger on the pulse, and better investigation skills they would not have used a throwaway comment like “There is no proof that Baidu played a part in concealing the discovery,” says WSJ. It’s patently obvious what’s going on with Baidu to those in the industry … the going rate is reported to be RMB 5 mil for deletion of negative news links by Baidu.
The Washington Post report also blindly accepted Baidu’s laughable statement that it was “revealing the whole truth to all,”
And if they had done further research, they could also have uncovered the illegal music scam perpetrated by Baidu which was instead reported by The Register (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/13/baidu_investigation/)
Further down, Deep Throat says »»»
A whole litany of accusations against Baidu include: illegal music file hosting, threatening editors of news sites to delete articles unfavourable to Baidu, click fraud, deleting negative news links about Baidu from search results, accepting payments from other companies to delete unfavorable news, click fraud, denial-of-service attacks and then some more!
How many of these have been investigated thoroughly by the likes of WSJ?
Babies have died, and more cases could have been prevented if a major search engine like Baidu had not blocked news items until Sep 12.
It was blogger power that revealed the extent of the damage that was initially censored by Baidu, and it was the force of blogger revelations that probably forced Baidu’s hands into realizing the futility of going down with the Sanlu milk cart and promptly opened their news sluice gates again.
While the poisoned milk was being spilt, the Financial Times was instead feting the fact that Baidu was one of 5 companies globally that have defied Google in the latter’s quest for absolute global domination.
There has not been any penetrative investigations by any of the major international publications on Baidu’s role in this whole baby-killing affair – they have instead merely been reduced to serving as echo-chambers of Baidu’s hollow press release denials.
On China’s network of online bulletin boards, “anonymous citizens have been permitted to debate practically every aspect of the scandal with minimal censorship,” says the Washington Post, adding:
“China’s largest Internet search engine, Baidu, said that in the interest of ‘revealing the whole truth to all,’ it had rebuffed a half-million-dollar ‘public relations’ payment from one of the mostly state-owned milk powder producers that had asked the online site to delete negative reports about it.”
Meanwhile, “The number of Chinese children reported sick from the poisonous plastic melamine added to their milk has leapt to almost 53,000, the government said,” states The Telegraph.
Wall Street Journal – Milk Powder Drama Spills Over China, September 17, 2008
p2pnet – Baidu suffers ‘poisoned milk’ backlash, September 20, 2008
Washington Post – Public Anger Over Milk Scandal Forces China’s Hand, September 19, 2008
The Telegraph – China milk scandal: 53,000 children ill from tainted powder, September 22, 2008
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September 22nd, 2008 at 10:58 am
and now the olympic torch is fireless…
September 22nd, 2008 at 2:22 pm
That’s alright the torch is fireless, China aims to have the best of the best. They’ll fake it with a computer graphic.
Wonder how they gonna fake bringing back to life all the sick and dead babies.
September 23rd, 2008 at 8:34 am
Here in China, news websites and blogs have been abuzz in recent days about what Baidu, the country’s largest search engine, did to help Chinese milk powder maker Sanlu to avoid bad press. Did Baidu provide protection to Sanlu by blocking out negative news in search results in return for advertising money?
The big issue here is objectivity in search and where people can go to get trusted information on the Internet. With censorship rife in China’s print media, the Internet was looked at as a welcomed source of truth.
This incident makes us wonder:
On September 12, a proposal from Sanlu’s PR agency was leaked to the public via the web. The memo described in detail recommendations by the PR firm to cover up the contaminated milk scandal. Among those recommendations include a payment of 3 million Chinese yuan (about US$440,000) which had been negotiated with Baidu in return for Baidu to censor its search results. When you look at reports and blogs in the Chinese media, one question continues to come up: What did Baidu do during the four weeks between August 11 when the crisis management proposal was made, and September 12, when the cash-for-cover-up scandal first broke. Baidu on September 13 issued a statement denying any wrong-doing, but did not dispute the accounts detailed in the leaked proposal.
The story then got more interesting. When Baidu’s Chinese Internet rival Alibaba posted a story about the scandal on its web site, Baidu threatened to sue. Alibaba responded by saying it was only reporting the truth, and calling for Baidu to apologize for deceiving the public about events that led to over 50,000 sick babies and several deaths.
Baidu’s argument was that they did not manipulate search results to conceal news of the deadly milk powder from the public, but a lot of questions remain. For example, many Chinese blogs have detail accounts of comparison of search results. On September 12, around 11,400 pieces of news related to the Sanlu tainted milk scandal could be found on Google’s search engine, however, only 11 pieces of news came up on Baidu using the same search criteria.
On the morning of September 13, after the PR agency proposal was leaked, Google’s search engine generated 11,800 pieces of news on the issue while Baidu only displayed 54 links in total. Yet after Baidu issued its official statement later in the day on September 13, Baidu’s search results on the tainted milk scandal suddenly jumped to 78,100 pieces of news (Google displayed 270,000 pieces of news for the same search). And that night, Google’s search engine generated 34,300 pieces of news on Sanlu’s PR proposal while Baidu only generated 243 pieces.
The leaked PR agency proposal suggested that Sanlu may already have been a large advertising client of Baidu, and that the milk company had already spent 1.2 million Chinese yuan advertising on Baidu. It goes on to say that another 1.8 million Chinese yuan would bring the total investment to 3 million Chinese yuan and that this would be enough to enjoy Baidu’s privileged ‘negative news handling’ service. So did Baidu really get paid to manipulate its search results?
In Baidu’s statement, it mentioned that on September 9 Sanlu’s PR agency contacted Baidu’s “key clients” department to negotiate the advertising ‘package’, but that it flat-out refused the proposal. Baidu said that on September 12 the PR agency called them again to try to pursue the ‘package’ but was rejected. Baidu then took pains to mention in its statement that this kind of matter would not normally be reported to ‘other departments’ or its senior management. In other words, if there was an agreement on the ‘package’ between Sanlu and Baidu, it was done without the knowledge of Baidu’s senior management. There goes the plausible deniability argument.
Although Baidu is expected to avoid direct liability, they will now be under a lot of pressure to explain their practices. There are reports that several multinational brands have ordered their Chinese subsidiaries to stop advertising on Baidu. Voices from the blog community in China are saying that given Baidu’s popularity, and therefore power, it has a moral obligation to display true and transparent search results. You can draw your own conclusions, but Internet users and advertisers are already holding Baidu accountable for what the company has allegedly done.