Chomsky’s volte-face? Want Want goes after another student

Maybe Want Want will go after him/her next

In what has become a predictable pattern, the group’s various outlets launched another series of attacks against a detractor 

Media outlets operated by the Want Want China Times Group (旺旺中時集團) yesterday intensified their campaign against a movement by a young Taiwanese student that invited two well-known US professors — who now claim they were “misled” — to be photographed holding a placard opposing media monopolization in Taiwan. 

In a series of articles occupying a full page, the Chinese-language China Times, one of several print media owned by the group, provided what it claimed were exchanges with Noam Chomsky, a famous linguist from the US’ Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a controversial figure on the intellectual left, as well as Ned Block, a New York-based philosopher, in which both said they were unaware that the placard contained language opposing Chinese manipulation of Taiwanese media.
 

Noam Chomsky holds the placard

Chomsky, 84, said he did not know that the message on the placard, which was written in Chinese and read “Anti-Media Monopoly. Say no to China’s black hands, defend press freedom. I am safeguarding Taiwan here in MIT,” had anything to do with China or Taiwan. 

Lin Ting-an (林庭安), a Taiwanese graduate student at the Institute of Philosophy of Mind and Cognition at National Yang Ming University, who wrote to Chomsky asking for his support prior to visiting him at MIT, says she clearly explained the matter to him and translated the Chinese content before the photograph was taken. 

My article, published today in the Taipei Times, continues here.