NEW YORK CHINESE BEAUTICIAN SUE CNN FOR US$1.3 BILLION

Two Chinese women filed a class action against the Media giant CNN in a United States federal court, demanding one dollar for every Chinese person on the planet.

New York beautician Lydia Leung and Beijing primary school teacher Li Lilan signed the complaint against broadcaster. They will be represented by Attorney Ming Hai and his law office.

The suit claims remarks by commentator Jack Cafferty labeling Chinese "goons and thugs" violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people and intentionally or recklessly inflicted emotional distress on the plaintiffs.

"So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed, I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years," Jack Cafferty said in the program "Situation Room" that aired on April 9.

The women are seeking compensation of one dollar for every Chinese person on the planet; a total of US$1.3 billion.

Cafferty, and CNN's parent company Turner Broadcasting, are named as co-defendants. According to New York-based overseas Chinese website Sinovision.net, the court has accepted the case.

Lawyers said the court will send subpoenas to the defendants within two weeks. If the defendants fail to respond within 30 days, the judge can find for the plaintiffs by default. Lawyers said the massive compensation figure would force CNN to contest, but declined to comment on the outcome or claims the case was a symbolic action rather than a serious attempt to seek damages.

CNN earlier issued a statement denying Cafferty or CNN had intended to offend the Chinese people. Cafferty clarified that he was referring to Chinese government. But his clarification was denounced by the Chinese Foreign Ministry as "an attempt to incite the Chinese people against the government" and as confirmation that the intention of CNN coverage of Tibet and the torch relay was to demonize China.

Ming Hai anticipated the defendants would try to argue they were referring to the Chinese government, but he pointed out that Cafferty used "they" rather than "it", implying he was talking about the Chinese people not the government. And when the commentator referred to "junk" and "poisoned pet food" produced by the Chinese, he was evidently not talking about the Chinese government. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to libel, the lawyer said.

Ming Hai has assembled a team of six lawyers, including a judge from New York Superior Court. "We are going to win because justice is on our side," Ming Hai said. "And I also believe Jack Cafferty will suffer during the long legal proceedings."

"US$1.3 billion averages out at one dollar per Chinese person, so it isn't much," he added.

Chinese lawyers sue CNN and Cafferty over 'goons and thugs' remark

The lawsuit case of Chinese lawyers against CNN and Cafferty will reflect the degree of the Principle VI and Principle VII of UNESCO's International Principles of Professional Ethics in Journalism were being practiced.

However, it is claimed that the establishment of precedent far outweighs any devastating effect of the reputation and dignity.

Fourteen Chinese lawyers in Beijing have sued American TV channel CNN and one of its commentators over a remark labeling the Chinese "a bunch of goons and thugs", saying it had harmed their reputation and dignity.

The plaintiffs, from Beijing Huanzhong & Partners, a Beijing-based law firm, filed a lawsuit with the Chaoyang Court in Beijing, demanded in the suit filed on Monday that CNN and its commentator Jack Cafferty cease "harmful acts and issue a public apology" and pay a compensation of 100 Yuan (about USD 14.30) to each of the plaintiffs for "mental distress".

During an appearance on "The Situation Room," a program that aired on April 9, Cafferty said while speaking about the US trade deficit with China: "We continue to import their junk with the lead paint on them and the poisoned pet food and export, you know, jobs to places where you can pay workers a dollar a month to turn out the stuff that we're buying from Wal-Mart. So I think our relationship with China has certainly changed," he said, "I think they're basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years."

CNN issued a statement early last week in which it said, in part, that Cafferty had made critical comments about many governments, including the United States.
"On this occasion Jack was offering his strongly held opinion of the Chinese government, not the Chinese people," said CNN in the statement.

Liu Jing, one of the plaintiffs, said the statement lacked sincerity and would never be treated as an apology. She said the remarks made by Cafferty gravely infringed upon and trampled her reputation and dignity as a Chinese and had caused severe spiritual and psychological harm.

She said that Cafferty's remarks violated the Chinese Constitution and the General Principles of the Civil Law, which state that human dignity should not be infringed upon.

"Cafferty has also violated Principle VI and Principle VII of UNESCO's International Principles of Professional Ethics in Journalism, as well as the Code of Ethics adopted by the Society of Professional Journalists of the United States," she said.

Liu also accused CNN of having erred in failing to determine the real situation related to its programs and failing to censor or restrain what she called biased news reporting, which had damaged the reputation of the plaintiffs.

IS CNN STARTED INFORMATION WARFARE WITH CHINA?

It is reported that when the news of Tibetans slicing children's ears off and burning people alive was appeared, Chinese netizens worldwide seized onto initial misreported details from the situation in Tibet and declared cyberwar on major western media and anti-CNN.com is set up.

The cyber warfare seems to be worsen by CNN on March 25, 2008 by running a "quickvote" poll asking readers to vote "yes" or "no" to the question: "Should the Olympics in China be boycotted?"

It is reported that the online poll on the Chinese tech site DoNews was reposted an item from the blog dengjin.com. by blogger. The blogger instructed readers how to vote "no" and urges them to do so in large numbers.

The blog post was published on March 26, 2008, and DoNews republished it at around 5 pm Beijing/Hong Kong time.

At 10:30 pm Hong Kong time, the blogger believed to be Chinese was accused hacked the poll and replaced with new posting. Immediately, CNN.com replaced the poll after Chinese netizens started all voting "no" in big numbers.

CNN WEB SITE TARGETED

The cyber warfare between CNN and Chinese is on. Anti-CNN.com, a website set up to protest the Western media's "distortion" of recent events in Tibet, has been hacked according to The Dark Visitor.

The anger against CNN started after Chinese netizens discovered that CNN.com had cropped out a group of Tibetan rioters, who appear to be beating somebody up, from the original AFP/Getty Images photo. On the left is the cropped photo, on the right is the original image that Chinese netizens located on the internet.

In return, the United States Cable News Network (CNN) website was attacked by hackers on the April 17, 2008.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- CNN was targeted Thursday by attempts to interrupt its news Web site, resulting in countermeasures that caused the service to be slow or unavailable to some users in limited areas of Asia.

"CNN took preventative measures to filter traffic in response to attempts to disrupt our Web site. A small percentage of CNN.com users in Asia are impacted," the network said in a statement.

"We do not know who is responsible, nor can we confirm where it came from," the statement continued.

A CNN spokesman said the Web site began to notice problems around midday Thursday and took measures to isolate the trouble by limiting the number of users who could access it from specific geographic areas.

As a result, he said, some users in those areas experienced temporary slowdowns or problems accessing the site.

The spokesman could not offer an estimate of how many users were affected. However, he said that the impact on daily usage was "imperceptible" and that the site "at no time" went down.

Service had returned to normal by mid-morning Friday, he said.

The attempt came as tech-oriented Web sites in Asia were reporting calls from hacker groups in China for denial-of-service attacks to be launched against the CNN Web site on Saturday over the network's coverage of unrest in Tibet.

Angry Chinese bloggers have accused CNN and several other Western news organizations of being unfair in covering recent pro-independence protests in Tibet, which is controlled by China.

In response, the network released a statement noting that "CNN's reputation is based on reporting global news accurately and impartially, while our coverage through the use of words, images or video always reflects a wide range of opinions and points of view on every story."

In a denial-of-service attack, hackers use automated programs to try to jam a site with bogus requests for service to the point that service is slowed or interrupted for legitimate users.

WESTERN CYBER INFORMATION WAR IS ON

The cyber information warfare is on again between America and China.

In protest against alleged Western media bias in their coverage of last month's riots in Lhasa, a Chinese website was launched to appeal to people around the world to "sign up" for its protest. It is reported that CNN was the target for many people's comments.

The appeal is : "Violent crimes of beating, smashing, looting and arson broke out in Lhasa in early March, but Western media organizations such as CNN and BBC have churned out untrue and distorted reports of the event. Please sign your name here to lodge your strong protest."

The website can be accessed via news portal Sina.com, appeared on Friday, and at press time had garnered more than 1.14 million signatures, most of which came from people on the mainland.

As of midday on Friday, about 11 percent of the signatures were from Beijing, 8 percent were from Guangdong and 7 percent were from Jiangxi, the Xinhua News Agency said.

Of those sent from overseas, 20 percent were from the United States.

Raja Petra ordered to pay RM2 m libel damages to UUM VC

The High Court here has ordered Raja Petra Raja Kamarudin to pay RM2 million to Universiti Utara Malaysia

vice-chancellor Tan Sri Dr Nordin Kardi in general damages over a libellous article he posted on his website 'Malaysia Today' two years ago.

In the landmark case against a blogger, Deputy High Court Registrar Priscilla Gengadaran also ordered Raja Petra to pay RM2 million, also in general damages, to the university over the article which appeared in his website on Dec 16, 2006.

Nordin, the first plaintiff and UUM, the second plaintiff, filed the suit against Raja Petra, the first defendant and three others - Parti Keadilan Rakyat (second defendant), chief editor of the opposition party's organ, Suara Keadilan (third defendant) and editor of the bulletin (fourth defendant) - on Feb 25 last year.

In his statement of claim against the four, Nordin and UUM had claimed that Raja Petra and the three defendants had published the libellous article against him and the university with the intention to tarnish his and UUM's good name and integrity.

The article, 'Dato' Dr Nordin Kardi Ciplak Karya Saya? Mohon Penjelasan...(Dato' Dr Nordin Kardi plagiarises my works? Please Explain..) was first published in Raja Petra's website, 'Malaysia Today', on Dec 16, 2006.

The article, authored by one Muhtar Suhaili, had claimed his works, 'Mahasiswa dan Tanggujawab Menguruskan Kejayaan (Graduands and the Responsibility in Managing Success) was plagiarised by a person which had used the name Dato' Nordin Kardi. As it turned out, Raja Petra had picked up the article which was posted on a website, http://muhtarsuhaili.tripod.com. The article was subsequently published in 'Suara Keadilan' on Dec 27, 2006.

In her judgment, Priscilla also ordered the Raja Petra to pay RM2 million to UUM. She also ordered the chief editor and editor of 'Suara Keadilan', to each pay Nordin RM1 million for publishing the article. She also ordered the third and fourth defendants to each pay UUM RM500,000 over the article.

Priscilla issued her judgment after Raja Petra; the third and fourth defendants did not defend themselves and had also failed to appoint counsel over the defamation suit. Nordin and UUM were represented by Mohd Khairul Azam Abdul Aziz.

Priscilla, however, has yet to fix a trial date for PKR, which was represented by R. Sivarasa.

Meanwhile, Nordin described the judgment as a landmark decision against cyber misconduct. "I hope others who might have been defamed by cyber misconduct would consider legal action against the wrongdoers. I also hope the High court decision would serve as a deterrent against any attempt to invade the integrity of an individual or an institution," he said.-nst