Note:
(a) Regarding quotation 1. The aftermath of Bloomberg News' change of tack and Forsythe's departure:
Jim Romenesko, Ben Richardson Quits Bloomberg News over Handling of Investigative Piece. JimRomenesko,com, Mar 24, 2014 (blog).
jimromenesko.com/2014/03/24/ben-richardson-quits-bloomberg-news-over-handling-of-investigative-piece/
("Ben Richardson has resigned from Bloomberg News after 13 years to protest editors’ handling of an investigative piece reported from China – a story that the bosses feared would get them expelled from the country. (The New York Times broke this story last November, then hired Michael Forsythe, the reporter accused of leaking it to them.) Richardson, who was an editor at large for Asia news (he edited the enterprise stories and columns), writes in an email")
(b) The section heading “一切从薄熙来事件开始” gives some explanation. But for more, see the next posting.
(c) "彭博社在2012年6月29日，发表《革命致富 [Revolution to Riches]》系列报道之《习近平百万亲戚揭露精英财富》，当时的习近平还是中国的侯任最高领导人。报道说，'随着习升上中共最高层，他的亲属也在商业利益上得以扩张，包括矿产、房地产和移动手机设备，' 总资产高达3.76亿美元。 该报道系列与《纽约时报》上海分社社长张大卫2012年10月26日的调查报道《总理家人隐秘的财富》，双双获当年美国乔治·波尔克奖的外国报道奖。而彭博新闻社该系列报道的主要记者之一就是当时该社驻北京的记者傅才德。"
(i) Michael Forsythe, Shai Oster, Natasha Khan and Dune Lawrence, Xi Jinping Millionaire Relations Reveal Fortunes of Elite. Bloomberg, June 29, 2012. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... l-fortunes-of-elite
This report is VERY long.
(ii) George Polk Awards
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Polk_Awards
(presented annually by Long Island University [private; 1926- ])
(d) "彭博资讯公司董事长高逸雅 Peter GRAUER 认为毙掉这篇文章是合理的，彭博新闻社应该更加专注于提供商业新闻，而不是撰写其他方面的文章。据《纽约时报》报道，在毙掉傅才德的文章后不到一周，彭博新闻社还封杀了一篇关于中国高官子女受雇于外国银行的报道。 《纽约时报》引用道琼斯公司中国区前负责人麦健陆 James McGREGOR [the next posting explained who he is: ‘a former Beijing bureau chief for the Financial Times’] 的话说 '作为一家媒体公司，你在中国越来越需要做出一个选择：要么做新闻，要么做生意，不能两个都做。' 彭博公司所做的被高逸雅称之为 '壮烈之举' 的修补与中国政府关系的努力取得了成果。2013年7月，彭博新闻社获得中国国务院颁发的提供金融资讯业务的更新执照；同年底，在美国副总统拜登访问中国后，彭博社的一些记者也于次年初获得了新的签证。"
(i) Personally I do not think the Chinese translation should be 壮烈之举, but that is all you see in Chinese when discussing the events.
(ii) For 壮烈之举, see “heroic jobs” in the next posting.
(e) 洪理达 Leta Hong Fincher: PhD sociology, Tsinghua University; Master’s in East Asian Studies, Stanford University; Bachelor’s degree, magna cum laude, in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University
(i) her book:
Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. London: Zed Books, 2014. www.zedbooks.co.uk/node/20312
(ii) Apparently the surnames of her parents were Hong and Fincher, respectively--though in the Web I fail to get her bio, including age and parents. 作者: choi 时间: 5-2-2015 12:23 本帖最后由 choi 于 5-2-2015 12:29 编辑
"During his Hong Kong visit, according to people present, Grauer had also told the bureau there that the company’s sales team had been forced to do a ‘heroic job’ repairing the company’s relations with Chinese officials following the Xi Jinping story. He warned the Bloomberg staff that the company would ‘be straight back in the shit-box’ in China if ‘we were to do anything like that again,’ one source said.
“The [New York] Times’ investigative work also involved sophisticated forensic accounting techniques and was extraordinary by any measure, but its target of choice was China’s outgoing prime minister, Wen Jiabao, a figure of far less power than an incoming president, whose family had been the subject of rumors of serious corruption for more than a decade. What is more, Bloomberg’s groundbreaking reporting on the Xi family came months before the Times would weigh in on the Wen clan.
Note:
(a) If you have time, you may want to read this--in part because the VOA report is somewhat based on this article, without attributing to it.
(b) Howard W French (born in Washington DC in 1958; white; associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism 2008- ; New York Times: Shanghai bureau chief 2003-2008, Tokyo bureau chief 1998-2003, bureau chief for West and Central Africa 1994-1998, bureau chief for Caribbean and Central America 1990-1994, joined NYT in 1986; native tongue in English, and fluent in Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese and Japanese)
He earned BA from University of Massachusetts, and after graduation in 1878 joined his father, a doctor, who had taken a job running rural clinics for the World Health Organization in Ivory Coast. Howard French taught English at the University of the Ivory Coast 1980-1982 and then started writing as a freelance reporter in West Africa for a variety of publications. See Bio. HowardWFrench.com, undated. www.howardwfrench.com/bio/
(c) "Like a car wreck in slow motion, the team that produced this work began falling apart. In November 2013, days after the first Times story, Bloomberg abruptly suspended Michael Forsythe, a lead writer on the China investigative work whom the company appeared to blame for leaking details about the killing of the latest project. * * * The crackup continued over the next few months. Bloomberg’s Projects and Investigation team, which had done much of the groundbreaking China work, was thrown into chaos, worsened by the resignations of two senior editors deeply involved in the projects. One was Amanda Bennett, a top enterprise editor."
(i) crack-up (n): "an accident in which a vehicle is badly damaged: CRASH, WRECK" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crack-up
(ii) crack up (vt): "to damage or destroy (a vehicle) by crashing <crack up a car>" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crack%20up
(d) "Bo was on the outs with Chinese authorities. For the Chinese state, Bo was fair game."
(e) "Beaten repeatedly on the Bo story [by Wall Street Journal], Bloomberg and the Times pushed hard on the theme of corruption, both choosing one top-level political figure a piece to illustrate the problem [David Barboza of New York Ties pursued premier Wen Jiabao]. A cornerstone of the argument that Bloomberg deserved the Pulitzer that the Times eventually won is the fact that the news agency [Bloomberg] chose the most ambitious target—the highest figure in the entire Chinese political system, Xi Jinping, the incoming president, about whom little of any particularly revealing nature was previously known. 'We were having our arse handed to us, and Mike said, well what we should do is follow the money,' said Ben Richardson, the British, Hong Kong-based former editor-at-large who quit the company in March. The Mike he referred to was Michael Forsythe, the lead writer for Bloomberg of what would become its Xi Jinping story"
(i) arse (n): "variant of ASS" www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arse
(ii) have one's ass handed to one: "verb phrase
To be decisively defeated <If he runs again he'll have his ass handed to him> (1990s+)"
The Dictionary of American Slang, Fourth Edition by Barbara Ann Kipfer, PhD and Robert L Chapman, PhD Copyright (C) 2007 by HarperCollins Publishers
dictionary.reference.com/browse/have+one%27s+ass+handed+to+one
(A) Or "get one's ass handed to one"
(B) The "ass" may be replaced with "butt."
(f) "He [Peter Grauer] warned the Bloomberg staff that the company would 'be straight back in the shit-box' in China if 'we were to do anything like that again,' one source said. * * * It [investigation into Xi Jinping and his clan] made the [Bloomberg] senior management feel good. I think they had no idea what they were getting into, though, and it wasn’t until they had been in the shit-box [ie, subjected to Chinese reprisals] for several months that they figured it out.” (brackets original)
The noun "shit-box" is a slang for anal canal--just inside the asshole (which is "anus" 肛門 in anatomy).