Talk:Ai Fen

Disappearance?

There have been reports in less reliable media about Ai Fen disappearing. I think the claim originates from 60 Minutes Australia, and has been picked up by The Daily Mail and Radio Free Asia, neither of which is a particularly reliable outlet. A Wall Street Journal reporter in Hong Kong, Fan Wenxin, is also disputing the Australian 60 Minutes report, and claims the program has promised to issue a correction. I've removed the claim of Ai Fen's disappearance, since the sourcing is weak right now. In any case, if there's any confirmation of these claims of her disappearance, there should be reporting from more reliable sources soon. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:47, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

The reports all cite 60 Minutes Australia, a production of Nine News, which has high reliability and is one of the most popular news networks in Australia. The particular show that made the report, 60 Minutes Australia, has been around over 40 years and won several awards. It is not "less reliable media" in any sense. The fact that some less reliable sources (such as the Daily Mail) then picked up the story does not in any way discredit the original story. As for Fan Wenxin's claim that Ai is well, this was a claim made in a tweet with zero corroborating evidence or explanation. Sure, he's a WSJ reporter, but he was not making this claim under the WSJ editorial aegis. It's just something he tweeted. He says that 60 minutes will issue a correction, but that tweet is 5 days old now and no correction has been issued, nor has any credible journalistic source cast any doubt on Ai's disappearance. I'll give it another 2 days. If no credible source debunks the 60 minutes report, I intend to add the section back, along with a reference to Fan's tweet claiming the story isn't true. (as an aside Thucydides411's comment above is marked 1 April 2020 but appears to have been posted 4 April 2020. not sure why this is)Acone (talk) 16:12, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Ai Fen gave a talk on an online conference this Thursday, after her supposed disappearance. Video of the talk is available online: [1]. She's also continuing to post updated pictures of herself on her Weibo account. I don't know whether mediabiasfactcheck.com itself is reliable, but my understanding is that 60 Minutes Australia is a bit sensationalized. Ai Fen is fairly well known at this point. If the claim that she has disappeared is really true, then there should be better sourcing for it in the next few days. If you think that the sourcing from 60 Minutes Australia alone is strong enough, despite the various elements that cast serious doubt on this claim, I recommend that we go to WP:RSN and get further input before adding this claim back into the article. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

The link you provided claiming to be a video of Ai Fen given a talk after her claimed disappearance is a broken link. Do you have a link that works? As I'm sure you know, the Chinese government continues to update social media accounts of people that are detain with generic content. I cannot find anything authoritative on the Internet that confirms your personal impression that 60 Minutes Australia is "a bit sensationalized"--and even if it were, that does not discredit its specific reports that something happened. It does not have any history of reporting false news. As I would hope you also know, China has recently ejected a bunch of western journalists, and information regarding the outbreak and its early reporters is tightly controlled. If you really do have a video of the talk she was scheduled to give, I would like to see it. But please be more careful than to just post a broken link and claim you've falsified the reporting of a well established news organization. Acone (talk) 21:14, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Accessing Weibo can be difficult without an account. In any case, I've posted a question at the reliable sources noticeboard, so hopefully we'll get some third-party input. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:16, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Can you clarify your last reply? You seem to be implying that I need to do something else to access the video. If that is the case, please tell me what I need to do exactly to see it. About what should be in the article, I think we need to separate two issues. Issue one: is 60 Minutes Australia a source worthy of citation in a Wikipedia article? To me the answer to that is pretty clearly yes. Issue two: is there credible doubt about the truth of the claims in the 60 Minutes Report? Again, the answer is yes. I have personally not yet seen anything I think substantially discredits the claim (again, I have not seen this video, and your link is broken), but I see how that is worth mention. But then again, Wikipedia is not supposed to be a place for original research. Trying to weigh the likelihood that Ai's Weibo posts are genuinely hers, or made by her captors (as is common) is a question of original research best done for journalists. Wikipedia should be based on what citable sources say, not the personal gestalt of primary evidence by Wikipedia editors. So my thinking is that unless you are willing to argue that 60 Minutes is itself not a citable source, which it looks like you aren't, my initial edit should be restored. Mentioning the Weibo activity and the April 2nd lecture may also be appropriate, even though it is sort of original research, as long as we caveat that with a source that mention's China's habit of updating the social media accounts of detainees, which is critical information for evaluating the Weibo feed.

Also, the nytimes has now mentioned Ai's disappearence. Yes, I realize that is an opinion piece, but claims of fact made in opinion pieces are still subject to nytimes editorial review. By now, if there were credible evidence that the story were false, I think we would have seen articles in other media debunking the 60 Minutes Report. But plainly we have not. Meanwhile, the correction allegedly promised to Fan Wenxin has not in fact appeared, nor have Fan's claims Ai isn't missing been reported by his employer the WSJ, nor has Fan himself posted anything clarifying his initial (wholly opaque, unreviewed) claims or addressing the lack of a correction. At this point, I don't see much argument for omitting the report. Caveat the claims is fine, I suppose, but simply omitting them is omitting important, citable information about the subject of the article. Acone (talk) 17:51, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

What I mean is that in order to access a lot of Weibo content, you need an account, which to my knowledge requires a Mainland Chinese phone number. Accessing posts without an account can be very hit-or-miss. I don't know why the original Weibo link no longer works (for me either). The video clip from the online conference has also been posted to Weibo here: [2].

I'm not claiming that 60 Minutes Australia is not a citable source in general. I'm saying that the show tends to be somewhat sensationalist, and that their claim about Ai Fen's disappearance has been disputed by a Wall Street Journal reporter who writes specifically about Mainland China. It's also being questioned by a Reuters correspondent (also a formerly at the WSJ) who reports on China: [3]. I would like to see stronger sourcing for the claim, especially if it is going to be put in Wikipedia's voice.

The opinion column by Roger Cohen in the NY Times does, however, lend the claim made by 60 Minutes Australia notability. Opinion pieces, even in generally reputable newspapers like the NY Times and Wall Street Journal, are not reliable sources for information, but I agree that the fact that Cohen has repeated this claim gives it importance.

At this point, I would be in favor of adding in the claim of Ai Fen's disappearance, with an attribution to 60 Minutes Australia. Hopefully, there will soon be more detailed clarification in reliable media about what the issue. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:19, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

A few weeks ago I reached out to 60 Minutes Australia, asking them to confirm that they stand behind their claim of Ai Fen having gone missing. I got no response. Over a month has passed from their first (and only) airing of this claim, no other piece of evidence has emerged since. Her weibo account is being updated regularly. Is it time to delete this bit from the article? Dan7264 (talk) 11:07, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Support as no evidence is conclusive here as to her disappearance, and evidence to the contrary is here. I would personally note that, being an Australian myself, 60 Minutes is known colloquially as being less of a news program and more of an entertainment program. They are mostly notorious for false stories and are generally sensationalist, particularly since this pandemic started. Do we have consensus, User:Thucydides411? Acalycine (talk) 11:25, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

@Acalycine: I agree with your assessment of 60 Minutes Australia. Having watched some of their programs, they look highly sensationalized to me. It comes across as The Daily Mail for TV. The question is really whether or not the claim that Ai Fen was disappeared is itself notable enough to mention here. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:29, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• Knowing how the Regime operates, she was certainly disappeared, and in all probability has been given a severe dressing down if not had threats issued against her and her family. Her acquiescence is no doubt tactical if not strategic to the regime and it may not be inconsistent for somebody to be disappeared and also subsequently publish "voluntary confessions" or show social media activity (viz Peter Dahlin and Gui Minhai). I would still nevertheless support mentioning that she was disappeared citing the NYT (and whichever other RS you care to include)but that there were subsequent activity on her Weibo account - that way, we fulfill the Wikipedia requirements to attribute the disappearance and can never be wrong. --Ohconfucius (on the move) (talk) 13:39, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• I want to make it clear that there is no source other than that one 60 Minutes Australia report, all the other news pieces can be traced back to it. As for the NYT article, that's an opinion piece. It may very well be true that she was in fact "disappeared" and someone else is updating her weibo account. This is of course very hard to disprove. But the fact of the matter is that this allegation is quite serious and should not in my opinion be based on one sentence in one report on one Australian TV network that cannot even be bothered to confirm that they stand behind this claim. Dan7264 (talk) 14:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware, her social media posts haven't been "voluntary confessions." They've been various normal posts, and then a video outside the hospital in which she says that she's heard people are worried about her and that she's fine. I agree with Dan7264 here that the sourcing is weak for this claim - 60 Minutes Australia is highly sensationalized (I'd compare it to a tabloid), and opinion pieces are not reliable sources, even if they appear in the NY Times. The claims that she was disappeared might be notable enough to cover, just because they've been repeated several places, but I don't think the article should imply in any way that the claims are true - because the sourcing is weak, and they appear to be false. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• Support speedy removal as per WP:BLP. This is poorly sourced and mountains of prima facie evidence is to the contrary. Whether or not her social media posts are 'fake' is not relevant - we cannot know and no reliable sources appear to have refuted these posts. Asserting that they are fake would be original research. Knowing how the Regime operates, she was certainly disappeared is hardly evidence, and a pretty faulty way of assessing events. Do we have consensus to remove, considering this is a month old discussion? Survey? Acalycine (talk) 02:40, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• Radio Free Asia posted a relevant article about Ai Fen on April 14 (link) that I completely missed. It says that RFA was able to reach her and it reports her confirming that she hasn't been detained and that she was in fact the person posting on her weibo account. However, it also quotes a source "familiar with the situation" saying that she "came under considerable political pressure behind the scenes and wasn't in a position to talk about it". This should clear all reasonable doubt about her having been detained, but then again it raises more questions about how exactly she was treated by the authorities. Anyway, with this added to the conversation, I vote for removing the part about her having gone missing. Dan7264 (talk) 15:56, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Once again, the information about her supposed disappearance has been added to the article. How should this be settled? The issue is described thoroughly in the above paragraphs. Dan7264 (talk) 18:22, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

1. "SARS" is a different disease with a much higher lethality. 2. The World Health Organisation was informed on 31 December 2019.

The article, along with most COVID-19 articles on Wikipedia dubiously suggest a Chinese government conspiracy to cover-up the virus.

1. Although "SARS" now has a more general meaning, at the time of the rebuke, "SARS" was commonly known as a particular disease which has a much higher lethality than COVID-19. Refer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome - "Prognosis: 9.5% chance of death (all countries)". That is possibly more than ten times as high as COVID-19, so it was not entirely unreasonable for Chinese officials to act as though the rumors of a new "SARS" outbreak were false. At the time of the rebuke, the only thing that was certain was that there was a pneumonia cluster and that lab reprots confirmed that one of the patients tested positive for a Coronavirus.

2. The World Health Organisation was informed on 31 December 2019. Refer https://www.who.int/csr/don/05-january-2020-pneumonia-of-unkown-cause-china/en/ - "On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. As of 3 January 2020, a total of 44 patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology have been reported to WHO by the national authorities in China. Of the 44 cases reported, 11 are severely ill, while the remaining 33 patients are in stable condition. According to media reports, the concerned market in Wuhan was closed on 1 January 2020 for environmental sanitation and disinfection. The causal agent has not yet been identified or confirmed. On 1 January 2020, WHO requested further information from national authorities to assess the risk." - To suggest that the world only knows about it because of persistent whistle-blowing is simply not supported by the timeline. MathewMunro (talk) 17:02, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

I hesitantly support your general assessment (I have discussed this whistle blower term at Talk:Li Wenliang), but which particular sections of the article are problematic, in your view? Acalycine (talk) 02:42, 10 May 2020 (UTC)