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James Fallows

James Fallows - James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States, and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. His latest book, China Airborne, will be published in May.
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James Fallows is based in Washington as a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He has worked for the magazine for nearly 30 years and in that time has also lived in Seattle, Berkeley, Austin, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, Shanghai, and Beijing. He was raised in Redlands, California, received his undergraduate degree in American history and literature from Harvard, and received a graduate degree in economics from Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In addition to working for The Atlantic, he has spent two years as chief White House speechwriter for Jimmy Carter, two years as the editor of US News & World Report, and six months as a program designer at Microsoft. He is an instrument-rated private pilot. He is also now the chair in U.S. media at the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia.

Fallows has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award five times and has won once; he has also won the American Book Award for nonfiction and a N.Y. Emmy award for the documentary series Doing Business in China. He was the founding chairman of the New America Foundation. His two most recent books, Blind Into Baghdad (2006) and Postcards From Tomorrow Square (2009), are based on his writings for The Atlantic; he is at work on another book about China. He is married to Deborah Fallows, author of the recent book Dreaming in Chinese. They have two married sons.

Fallows welcomes and frequently quotes from reader mail sent via the "Email" button below. Unless you specify otherwise, we consider any incoming mail available for possible quotation -- but not with the sender's real name unless you explicitly state that it may be used. If you are wondering why Fallows does not use a "Comments" field below his posts, please see previous explanations here and here.
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Unfortunate NYT lapse in Beijing

By James Fallows

Aug 4 2008, 11:45 AM ET

Adam Minter, of the ShanghaiScrap blog (and an Atlantic author), has noticed a heartbreaking and consequential bit of sloppiness in a NYT report today out of Beijing. The Times quoted a Beijing resident on what is, given the attack on police in the largely-Islamic Xinjiang region of China, perhaps the most sensitive topic of the moment: the Chinese government's efforts to quash what it considers mounting terrorist potential from its Muslim Uighur minority. The Times understandably grants its source anonymity on this topic, given the potential risks to him if he were identified -- and then carelessly identifies him! Minter quotes the crucial passage from this Times story today:

The owner of the Xinjiang Kashgar Restaurant near the main Olympic venue said he shut down Tuesday [of last week] after repeated visits from officials who cited health concerns. He said several other Muslim restaurants nearby had received similar visits. The owner, a Uighur, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear that he would be further harassed by the authorities. 
The passage is still in the story at the NYT's site as of two minutes ago -- although once the info has been published at all, I guess whether it stays up is moot.

I know that very restaurant and went past it today on my trip out to the Olympic venue. Poor guy. This can't have been intentional, but the results are the same as if it were. And no one within the NYT system looked at these two sentences and said, Wait a minute...  ?
 


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