Foreign Policy’s blog looks at the bizarre and offensive slideshow posted on the Xinhua site before being deleted:
We’ll probably never know what motivated a team of editors and graphic artists working for People’s Daily and Xinhua, the Chinese state-owned wired service, to collaborate on — or at least greenlight posting — a slideshow of American celluloid celebrities photoshopped in blackface. But the results are causing an uproar. Yesterday, the slideshow, which featured celebs ranging from Lady Gaga to Madonna to Jennifer Anniston, ran on both of those Chinese news sources’ web sites. The headline on the People’s Daily site was: “If hot stars were blackened.”
By the time the Wall Street Journal contacted Xinhua for comment, the slideshow link had been disabled, yet screen grabs are preserved here (by WSJ) and here (by the blog Shanghaiist). The credit line that ran with the original slideshow was “CRI Online,” which the Journal speculates may refer to China Radio International, a state-run news service. That fact, however, has not been confirmed.
Naturally, online protests have erupted. And there’s plenty to be said about the haphazardness of news judgment in China and about the hugely disconcerting mix of discrimination and voyeurism surrounding race in a country where prosperous eastern cities are largely racially homogenous.
See also an open letter to Xinhua over this issue by McClatchy’s China correspondent Tom Lasseter.
