International Law

Tales of Web Editing Gone Awry

By Stan

You ever hit the “send” button prematurely and allow an email with embarrassing content to go out to the wrong person? That’s the nearest analogy I can come up with for this tale of woe about an editor at the People.com.cn site, but even then it does not do this story justice.

The poor bastard put up a story on an individual suspected of human trafficking. The cops were on the lookout, and a photo of the suspect was available. The web editor posted the story and intended to embed the suspect’s pic. The finished product was supposed to look like this:

Unfortunately, that’s not what ultimately ended up on the site. No, instead, this is what was uploaded along with the story about the human trafficker:

Yeah, that’s a big ouch for that editor. Guy must have pissed himself after he found out what had happened.

The explanation from Ren Min Wang (People.com.cn) is perhaps the most entertaining part of this whole episode. According to them, the editor (who has been suspended) is such a big fan of Chairman Mao that his computer was riddled with Mao pics (whose isn’t?). It was therefore not surprising that when browsing his PC for the suspect’s photo, he mistakenly selected one of the many Mao pics instead.

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Full post as published by China Hearsay on June 30, 2009 (boomark / email).