JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In recent years, dozens of news organizations around the world have reported on a young Chinese man named Wang Jingyu. Wang portrayed himself as a brave dissident standing up to Communist Party repression, but an NPR investigation uncovered evidence linking Wang to an elaborate con. Following NPR's reporting, at least 10 news organizations retracted or amended their stories, a mass action that people who study journalism say they've rarely, if ever, seen. NPR's Frank Langfitt reports.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: Wang Jingyu is 23 years old and has asylum status in the Netherlands. He made his name telling reporters that the Communist Party constantly threatened and harassed him, including, he said, calling in bomb threats to hotels and Chinese embassies and leaving his name.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Wang Jingyu is heading to his adversary. The Chinese...
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Wang Jingyu is a political dissident based in the Hague who claims he has been harassed by people connected to the service.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: His name is Wang Jingyu.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #4: Wang Jingyu, who lives in the Netherlands.
LANGFITT: Last year Wang told NPR that Chinese agents had called in bomb threats and attributed them to the family of a dissident to get them in trouble. But NPR investigated and found something completely different. The government documents Wang said confirmed the bomb threat story - they were forgeries. And the family provided NPR with hundreds of related documents that they said proved Wang had swindled them out of their life savings. Wang insists his claims of Chinese government harassment are true and that he's never cheated anyone out of money.
WANG JINGYU: So this is ridiculous.
LANGFITT: It's ridiculous.
WANG: Ridiculous. And I promise I will sue all of them.
LANGFITT: You will sue...
WANG: Yeah.
LANGFITT: ...All of them.
After NPR broke the story, news organizations retracted their reports featuring Wang or amended them with links to NPR's findings. Among those organizations are the Associated Press, Al Jazeera, Germany's Deutsche Welle and Radio Free Asia, which is funded by the U.S. government. Ed Wasserman is the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Cal Berkeley.
ED WASSERMAN: In the 25 years or so that I've been watching this carefully and writing about it, I've never seen anything like this. And in the literature, I can't think of another instance.
LANGFITT: After reading NPR's coverage, Wasserman described Wang like this.
WASSERMAN: A uniquely successful manipulator of media who managed to develop a reputation and develop real stature in the overseas Chinese community thanks to the willingness of influential media to tell his story, which cast him in the role of basically a hero and a freedom fighter.
LANGFITT: Lea Hellmueller is a journalism professor who teaches ethics at City St. George's University of London. She said Wang's story reminds her of another one in which news organizations gave a lot of publicity to someone who turned out to be unreliable. Her name - Elizabeth Holmes. She's the Stanford dropout who tricked reporters and investors into believing that her company, Theranos, had created a groundbreaking blood-testing machine.
LEA HELLMUELLER: Forbes named her the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in the United States. And it was really the media that helped her shape this public image. Ironically - and that's why I was reminded of Wang's case - journalism was also the primary driver of Theranos' downfall.
LANGFITT: As Hellmueller points out, it was the Wall Street Journal which exposed Holmes and Theranos.
HELLMUELLER: They launched this full-fledged investigation, bringing out the very best in journalism.
LANGFITT: Ed Wasserman from Berkeley says reporters may have been too willing to believe Wang because his stories neatly fit an overall narrative that is true. China does routinely target critics overseas, even though the government denies it.
WASSERMAN: To some degree, the Chinese government is a bit libel-proof. If you get it wrong, where's the harm? You know, if they didn't do it to this guy, they probably did it to somebody else.
LANGFITT: Some activists weren't happy that NPR exposed Wang, but others said the stories help keep the movement honest. Badiucao is a Chinese Australian cartoonist and activist.
BADIUCAO: I think it's a relief that basically journalism prove itself the mechanism of it have the capacity to self-correction. I think it restore confidence for me in such line of work.
LANGFITT: The dissident who says Wang wiped out his savings has filed a complaint against him with Dutch police. Today police sent him a letter. They said they have neither the time nor resources to investigate Wang. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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