Arguing With Peter Goodman
Wednesday, March 15 2006 Filed in: Adoption
Info
First an apology to those of you looking for a new
episode of Stinky Mouse, I promise to post the next
one on Saturday morning.
This post is a follow up to my last one. Peter Goodman is the author of the article published in last Sunday's issue of The Washington Post. I saw that the Post allows you to email their writers. I assumed Peter might be receiving a good number of emails from rankled folks in the adoption community, but I wrote him all the same. I figured at first he would probably not even read what i wrote. I'm not really very good at this sort of thing: politely expressing my displeasure with someone. And this is a complicated issue. The ethics of international adoption are murky at best and is something I struggle with personally. Still I felt that while his article dealt with important issues it was constructed in a subversive manner. What I ended up sending him was less than I had originally written and ended up being a short comment expressing my disappointment with the article:
I'll assume you are aware of the ripples your Sunday article has sent through the community of families who have adopted from China, so this message is probably an echo of many others you have already received. I see from Brian Stuy's blog that he has written to The Washington Post in response to your article. I hope you read what he wrote.
You have been afforded the opportunity to have your words read by many, many people. Your article was hurtful to my family and many others. Please be more thoughtful in your future efforts.
I was quite surprised when I promptly received a reply from him. Upon reading the reply it became apparent to me that this was most likely a boilerplate response he was sending out to everyone who had written him in opposition to the piece. Here is his reply:
Dear Scott,
Thanks for your note. First, I can assure you that I do fully understand the stakes involved here -- the emotions for adopting families, the clear benefits of the foreign adoption program -- and I am cognizant of the impact of the piece. Surely, for a family that has adopted from China, or is considering doing so, my piece dredges up a lot of uncomfortable questions. But I fear that your reaction to the piece is indicative of the general reaction from the US adopting community: You are reflexively trying to spin away uncomfortable facts rather than confronting this reality in a spirit of bringing about positive changes and perhaps pressuring the institutions involved -- US-based adoption agencies, the Chinese and US governments -- for some accountability. You are blaming the messenger.
I visited Hunan and Guangdong and spent several months investigating the events in question. My piece quotes by name a lawyer for one of those convicted, as well as the mother of that defendant, in addition to a prosecution source and others familiar with events in Hunan and Guangdong. Let's revisit some of what they tell us: 1) Roughly 1,000 baby girls were brought from Guangdong for money to orphanages in Hunan and then put out for adoption, nearly all of them to foreign families. 2) The defense side claims the babies were first abandoned and then sold, a distinction that would determine whether their clients are executed or merely get lengthy prison sentences. In any event, they are copping to large-scale trafficking. That, again, is from the defense attornies. The mother of a defendant confirmed all of this. That the trafficking occurred is beyond question: It was reported in China's official state mouthpiece, China Daily, and confirmed by the people I spoke to. That it involved the abduction of children comes from the prosecution and the court verdict.
Roughly 40,000 Chinese kids have been adopted by foreigners in the years during which this ring has been operating. That means -- assuming this ring is the only one operating in China during that period -- that 2.5 percent of all foreign adoptions involve kids who landed in the adoption program illegitimately. This is according to the defense attornies themselves, supplemented by a prosecution source and a police expert on trafficking. You don't think 1,000 kids is a problem worthy of investigation? Do the Chinese families figure in your thoughts? Isn't it more than a little selfish to simply focus on the impacts of my piece for American families wanting healthy babies?
Your letter is dismaying to me because it illustrates how a lot of people whose emotions are on the line here are adversarially dismissing these uncomfortable truths with ad hominen attacks and name-calling rather than taking on what seems to me to be their moral imperative -- demanding from US-based adoption agencies and the US and Chinese governments a thorough investigation of the trafficking situation in China to ensure that the foreign adoption program is not affected.
Yes, the foreign adoption program has done an awful lot of good, for kids being raised in good homes and for well-run Chinese orphanages that now have funds for better facilities. Protecting it demands that it be safeguarded against abuse. And that can happen only if decent people press to unearth unpleasant realities and fix them, rather than self-servingly trying to cover them up.
During my now five years in China, I have seen repeatedly how reporting of sensitive issues by the foreign press can lead to action from Beijing. On SARS and AIDS, for example, initial government cover-ups of the extent of these problems eventually gave way to credible public health campaigns after sustained reporting by our paper and others. So I really have a problem with the position you are taking, suggesting that we should effectively self-censor ourselves lest China stop handing over healthy infants. The foreign adoption program is in so many ways an excellent thing, and may it continue -- above-board, scrutinized and protected from abuse rather that riven with problems that some would simply push under the rug to keep the babies coming.
I do appreciate that this is an issue you care about and that you took the time to write. I hope you take my response in the spirit in which it is intended -- as a way of clarifying and shedding light.
Best wishes,
Peter S. Goodman
Asian Economic Correspondent/ Shanghai Bureau Chief
The Washington Post
I read through this response several times. Each time feeling a bit more insulted by his tone. I should just let this crap go, but the stupid voices in my head just wouldn't let me. so I shot off the following:
Dear Peter,
Thank you for replying to my email. I appreciate that the intent was to "clarify and shed light”. I wish that intent were more clearly apparent in your original article.
You imply I have resorted to calling you names and have tried to discredit your article through personal attacks on your character. I have done neither of these things. In addition, your response makes a number of assumptions about my position, which I am not, sure how you arrived at based on what I wrote. I kept the comments in my original email to you very brief as I assumed you might be receiving a large number of emails on this article. I am sorry if my brevity confused you.
You accuse me of reflexively trying to spin away uncomfortable facts and promoting self-censorship. These are not my positions. I do not question that trafficking of infants has occurred in China. Nor do I believe this fact should be swept under the rug. The problem I have with your article is the way you have structured it to lead people to believe things for which you have no proof. You state, "assuming this ring is the only one ... 2.5 percent of all foreign adoptions involve kids who landed in the adoption program illegitimately." Obviously this is an issue that is more than worthy of investigation. However your efforts cheapen genuine investigative reporting when you twist things in order to generate lurid headlines. I am dismayed, but not surprised to learn money has changed hands in China over the exchange of children. But of these 1000 children, how many were "stolen" as your headline implies? Was it your intent to for readers to believe that a 16-month old named Fei Mei was taken to supply the international adoption market or was this simply the result of poor editing?
You accuse me of focusing on the impact of your piece for American families wanting healthy babies. You are mistaken. My focus is on the thousands of children languishing in orphanages in need of families. My newly adopted, special needs son waited for 33 months in an S.W.I. to be adopted. The PRC's official estimate of the number of orphans in its care is 500,000. Some outside groups put it at 2 million or higher. The number of all children adopted internationally out of China added together doesn't even dent this. For an article so riddled with inconsistencies it seems somewhat glaring to leave this fact out.
You ask if the Chinese families figure into my thoughts. They most certainly do. I wish the birth parents of my adopted son had had the resources to enable them to keep and raise him. I wish they lived in a culture that valued both genders equally and were accepting of people with physical defects. The unbearable social pressure generated by China's one child policy coupled with the traditional value placed on healthy sons forces women into abandoning countless children every year. The human rights issue here is huge, yet instead of even mentioning this, your article implies the demand of foreign adoptive parents has created a market for stolen babies. I apologize if I come across as selfish when I ask you to avoid sensationalism and to practice responsible journalism.
Sincerely,
Scott Ocheltree
Okay, I figured this would be the end of it. Probably wasted bandwidth on my part, but I just couldn't let the things he had written go. And then I got this next one back from him:
I appreciate where you are coming from. The foreign adoption program has been a very valuable way to provide homes for kids in need, and I applaud your concern for the kids. Now that program is being exploited by corrupt elements in China. That is simply beyond debate. As for the girl in the lead of my piece, nowhere do I say that she landed abroad. I am very clear in saying that we don't know where she is. But that's precisely the point: We know she was taken in a place where a trafficking ring has been operating. We have defense attornies for a convicted trafficking ring acknoledging that their clients have delivered 1,000 babies to orphanages for money for the foreign adoption program. How many kids are abducted as opposed to be being abandoned and then sold? Don't know. I'd like to, and it's an important question, one that I'll keep after. But I know that some kids have been abducted -- the court said that, and it was reported in China Daily... I mean, c'mon! -- and I know that the foreign adoption program is vulnerable to such abuse. I fail to see how it "cheapens investigative reporting" to highlight a problem and a vulnerability. I would hope that you would spend more time leaning on US adoption agencies now spinning reassurances for some accountability, as opposed to criticizing journalists operating in the public interest.
Peter
Now I'm really surprised. He does seem to be reading my emails. Still I am bothered by his hubris. He is completely ignoring my main point and has even spun my words around on me. Why can't I let this crap go?
I write again:
Peter,
Your habit of spinning words around to change the appearance of things is apparent even in your last reply to me: I never said "highlighting a problem and a vulnerability" cheapens investigative reporting. I said twisting a story to generate lurid headlines cheapens investigative reporting. And THAT is my point. You have taken a very serious issue and spun it for its shock value.
I don't believe the international adoption community has sided against you for your reporting of the facts surrounding baby trafficking. People are upset because you have used this tragedy as a tool to smear them. You say I should be pressuring agencies who are "spinning" reassurances instead of bothering you. I haven't been exposed to any of their spin, but then they don't have the front page of the Washington Post as a platform.
You printed the headline: "STEALING BABIES FOR ADOPTION" . Then went on to say Americans pouring into China with dollars in hand have transformed once-unwanted Chinese girls into valuable commodities worth stealing. I find it amazing that in an article of this length concerning the adoption of abandoned children from China you managed to not even mention China's one child per family policy.
"...i mean, c'mon!"
I am glad you view your role as a "journalist operating in the public interest"; I believe a big part of that job would be to report the facts honestly instead of shading the truth and omitting parts of the story to create a sensational headline. Again, I take no issue with the facts you presented in your article. It is the way you spun them, exactly like you spun what I said into something else.
Scott
And now it appears to me that the Asian Economic Correspondent/ Shanghai Bureau Chief for The Washington Post is just as stubborn as me and doesn't have anything better to do either, for he responded again:
Scott,
We could bandy about on the headline. (Reporters don't write headlines, by the way, as lame as that sounds. I wouldn't have written it that way.) And I take your point about the one child policy. I had a paragraph in there originally about it. It got chopped for space, but I didn't argue strenuously against the change because I felt we were covered by noting that child trafficking predates the foreign adoption program by a lot.
Yes, this is a serious issue, and, yes, the front page of the Post has real impact and that carries real responsibility. You sound like a reasonable and serious person, and I'm sorry if I've lumped you in with some of the less reasonable people with whom I've been unfortunately corresponding these past days. But I do think that your judgment is being clouded on this one by your position as an adoptive parent -- a perfectly noble position from where I sit, by the way, for whatever it's worth. Given that the DEFENSE admits they illegally procured about 1,000 babies to feed the foreign adoption market, how can you possibly argue against the reality that the program has turned healthy baby girls into commodities?
Now, it is true that the defense contends that the kids presented into evidence so far in Hengyang were abnadoned and then sold and not abducted. And that is obviously a very significant distinction. It is also true that the court found otherwise, and my prosecution source says that the other several hundred kids did include cases of abduction.
None of which fundamentally indicts the foreign adoption program. But it seems an inescapable fact that a byproduct of the program is that healthy baby girls have been turned into a commodity, as the very people who have participated in the trafficking have told us.
Peter
Okay, I surrender. Peter is incapable of conceding that his reporting of this tragic story might be colored through his rhetoric to portray international adoption and adoptive families in a negative manner. At best this will be a verbal stalemate, and he is much better than me at quickly crafting a reply which redirects my argument.
The CCAA made an announcement today stating that no abducted children were placed with adoptive families from the U.S. You can read the AP version of this story HERE. For a clear, and not so happy interpretation of this announcement see Brian Stuy's analysis on research-china.org.
Sorry for the long boring post. Anybody out there still reading? Post a comment and let me know you're there.
This post is a follow up to my last one. Peter Goodman is the author of the article published in last Sunday's issue of The Washington Post. I saw that the Post allows you to email their writers. I assumed Peter might be receiving a good number of emails from rankled folks in the adoption community, but I wrote him all the same. I figured at first he would probably not even read what i wrote. I'm not really very good at this sort of thing: politely expressing my displeasure with someone. And this is a complicated issue. The ethics of international adoption are murky at best and is something I struggle with personally. Still I felt that while his article dealt with important issues it was constructed in a subversive manner. What I ended up sending him was less than I had originally written and ended up being a short comment expressing my disappointment with the article:
I'll assume you are aware of the ripples your Sunday article has sent through the community of families who have adopted from China, so this message is probably an echo of many others you have already received. I see from Brian Stuy's blog that he has written to The Washington Post in response to your article. I hope you read what he wrote.
You have been afforded the opportunity to have your words read by many, many people. Your article was hurtful to my family and many others. Please be more thoughtful in your future efforts.
I was quite surprised when I promptly received a reply from him. Upon reading the reply it became apparent to me that this was most likely a boilerplate response he was sending out to everyone who had written him in opposition to the piece. Here is his reply:
Dear Scott,
Thanks for your note. First, I can assure you that I do fully understand the stakes involved here -- the emotions for adopting families, the clear benefits of the foreign adoption program -- and I am cognizant of the impact of the piece. Surely, for a family that has adopted from China, or is considering doing so, my piece dredges up a lot of uncomfortable questions. But I fear that your reaction to the piece is indicative of the general reaction from the US adopting community: You are reflexively trying to spin away uncomfortable facts rather than confronting this reality in a spirit of bringing about positive changes and perhaps pressuring the institutions involved -- US-based adoption agencies, the Chinese and US governments -- for some accountability. You are blaming the messenger.
I visited Hunan and Guangdong and spent several months investigating the events in question. My piece quotes by name a lawyer for one of those convicted, as well as the mother of that defendant, in addition to a prosecution source and others familiar with events in Hunan and Guangdong. Let's revisit some of what they tell us: 1) Roughly 1,000 baby girls were brought from Guangdong for money to orphanages in Hunan and then put out for adoption, nearly all of them to foreign families. 2) The defense side claims the babies were first abandoned and then sold, a distinction that would determine whether their clients are executed or merely get lengthy prison sentences. In any event, they are copping to large-scale trafficking. That, again, is from the defense attornies. The mother of a defendant confirmed all of this. That the trafficking occurred is beyond question: It was reported in China's official state mouthpiece, China Daily, and confirmed by the people I spoke to. That it involved the abduction of children comes from the prosecution and the court verdict.
Roughly 40,000 Chinese kids have been adopted by foreigners in the years during which this ring has been operating. That means -- assuming this ring is the only one operating in China during that period -- that 2.5 percent of all foreign adoptions involve kids who landed in the adoption program illegitimately. This is according to the defense attornies themselves, supplemented by a prosecution source and a police expert on trafficking. You don't think 1,000 kids is a problem worthy of investigation? Do the Chinese families figure in your thoughts? Isn't it more than a little selfish to simply focus on the impacts of my piece for American families wanting healthy babies?
Your letter is dismaying to me because it illustrates how a lot of people whose emotions are on the line here are adversarially dismissing these uncomfortable truths with ad hominen attacks and name-calling rather than taking on what seems to me to be their moral imperative -- demanding from US-based adoption agencies and the US and Chinese governments a thorough investigation of the trafficking situation in China to ensure that the foreign adoption program is not affected.
Yes, the foreign adoption program has done an awful lot of good, for kids being raised in good homes and for well-run Chinese orphanages that now have funds for better facilities. Protecting it demands that it be safeguarded against abuse. And that can happen only if decent people press to unearth unpleasant realities and fix them, rather than self-servingly trying to cover them up.
During my now five years in China, I have seen repeatedly how reporting of sensitive issues by the foreign press can lead to action from Beijing. On SARS and AIDS, for example, initial government cover-ups of the extent of these problems eventually gave way to credible public health campaigns after sustained reporting by our paper and others. So I really have a problem with the position you are taking, suggesting that we should effectively self-censor ourselves lest China stop handing over healthy infants. The foreign adoption program is in so many ways an excellent thing, and may it continue -- above-board, scrutinized and protected from abuse rather that riven with problems that some would simply push under the rug to keep the babies coming.
I do appreciate that this is an issue you care about and that you took the time to write. I hope you take my response in the spirit in which it is intended -- as a way of clarifying and shedding light.
Best wishes,
Peter S. Goodman
Asian Economic Correspondent/ Shanghai Bureau Chief
The Washington Post
I read through this response several times. Each time feeling a bit more insulted by his tone. I should just let this crap go, but the stupid voices in my head just wouldn't let me. so I shot off the following:
Dear Peter,
Thank you for replying to my email. I appreciate that the intent was to "clarify and shed light”. I wish that intent were more clearly apparent in your original article.
You imply I have resorted to calling you names and have tried to discredit your article through personal attacks on your character. I have done neither of these things. In addition, your response makes a number of assumptions about my position, which I am not, sure how you arrived at based on what I wrote. I kept the comments in my original email to you very brief as I assumed you might be receiving a large number of emails on this article. I am sorry if my brevity confused you.
You accuse me of reflexively trying to spin away uncomfortable facts and promoting self-censorship. These are not my positions. I do not question that trafficking of infants has occurred in China. Nor do I believe this fact should be swept under the rug. The problem I have with your article is the way you have structured it to lead people to believe things for which you have no proof. You state, "assuming this ring is the only one ... 2.5 percent of all foreign adoptions involve kids who landed in the adoption program illegitimately." Obviously this is an issue that is more than worthy of investigation. However your efforts cheapen genuine investigative reporting when you twist things in order to generate lurid headlines. I am dismayed, but not surprised to learn money has changed hands in China over the exchange of children. But of these 1000 children, how many were "stolen" as your headline implies? Was it your intent to for readers to believe that a 16-month old named Fei Mei was taken to supply the international adoption market or was this simply the result of poor editing?
You accuse me of focusing on the impact of your piece for American families wanting healthy babies. You are mistaken. My focus is on the thousands of children languishing in orphanages in need of families. My newly adopted, special needs son waited for 33 months in an S.W.I. to be adopted. The PRC's official estimate of the number of orphans in its care is 500,000. Some outside groups put it at 2 million or higher. The number of all children adopted internationally out of China added together doesn't even dent this. For an article so riddled with inconsistencies it seems somewhat glaring to leave this fact out.
You ask if the Chinese families figure into my thoughts. They most certainly do. I wish the birth parents of my adopted son had had the resources to enable them to keep and raise him. I wish they lived in a culture that valued both genders equally and were accepting of people with physical defects. The unbearable social pressure generated by China's one child policy coupled with the traditional value placed on healthy sons forces women into abandoning countless children every year. The human rights issue here is huge, yet instead of even mentioning this, your article implies the demand of foreign adoptive parents has created a market for stolen babies. I apologize if I come across as selfish when I ask you to avoid sensationalism and to practice responsible journalism.
Sincerely,
Scott Ocheltree
Okay, I figured this would be the end of it. Probably wasted bandwidth on my part, but I just couldn't let the things he had written go. And then I got this next one back from him:
I appreciate where you are coming from. The foreign adoption program has been a very valuable way to provide homes for kids in need, and I applaud your concern for the kids. Now that program is being exploited by corrupt elements in China. That is simply beyond debate. As for the girl in the lead of my piece, nowhere do I say that she landed abroad. I am very clear in saying that we don't know where she is. But that's precisely the point: We know she was taken in a place where a trafficking ring has been operating. We have defense attornies for a convicted trafficking ring acknoledging that their clients have delivered 1,000 babies to orphanages for money for the foreign adoption program. How many kids are abducted as opposed to be being abandoned and then sold? Don't know. I'd like to, and it's an important question, one that I'll keep after. But I know that some kids have been abducted -- the court said that, and it was reported in China Daily... I mean, c'mon! -- and I know that the foreign adoption program is vulnerable to such abuse. I fail to see how it "cheapens investigative reporting" to highlight a problem and a vulnerability. I would hope that you would spend more time leaning on US adoption agencies now spinning reassurances for some accountability, as opposed to criticizing journalists operating in the public interest.
Peter
Now I'm really surprised. He does seem to be reading my emails. Still I am bothered by his hubris. He is completely ignoring my main point and has even spun my words around on me. Why can't I let this crap go?
I write again:
Peter,
Your habit of spinning words around to change the appearance of things is apparent even in your last reply to me: I never said "highlighting a problem and a vulnerability" cheapens investigative reporting. I said twisting a story to generate lurid headlines cheapens investigative reporting. And THAT is my point. You have taken a very serious issue and spun it for its shock value.
I don't believe the international adoption community has sided against you for your reporting of the facts surrounding baby trafficking. People are upset because you have used this tragedy as a tool to smear them. You say I should be pressuring agencies who are "spinning" reassurances instead of bothering you. I haven't been exposed to any of their spin, but then they don't have the front page of the Washington Post as a platform.
You printed the headline: "STEALING BABIES FOR ADOPTION" . Then went on to say Americans pouring into China with dollars in hand have transformed once-unwanted Chinese girls into valuable commodities worth stealing. I find it amazing that in an article of this length concerning the adoption of abandoned children from China you managed to not even mention China's one child per family policy.
"...i mean, c'mon!"
I am glad you view your role as a "journalist operating in the public interest"; I believe a big part of that job would be to report the facts honestly instead of shading the truth and omitting parts of the story to create a sensational headline. Again, I take no issue with the facts you presented in your article. It is the way you spun them, exactly like you spun what I said into something else.
Scott
And now it appears to me that the Asian Economic Correspondent/ Shanghai Bureau Chief for The Washington Post is just as stubborn as me and doesn't have anything better to do either, for he responded again:
Scott,
We could bandy about on the headline. (Reporters don't write headlines, by the way, as lame as that sounds. I wouldn't have written it that way.) And I take your point about the one child policy. I had a paragraph in there originally about it. It got chopped for space, but I didn't argue strenuously against the change because I felt we were covered by noting that child trafficking predates the foreign adoption program by a lot.
Yes, this is a serious issue, and, yes, the front page of the Post has real impact and that carries real responsibility. You sound like a reasonable and serious person, and I'm sorry if I've lumped you in with some of the less reasonable people with whom I've been unfortunately corresponding these past days. But I do think that your judgment is being clouded on this one by your position as an adoptive parent -- a perfectly noble position from where I sit, by the way, for whatever it's worth. Given that the DEFENSE admits they illegally procured about 1,000 babies to feed the foreign adoption market, how can you possibly argue against the reality that the program has turned healthy baby girls into commodities?
Now, it is true that the defense contends that the kids presented into evidence so far in Hengyang were abnadoned and then sold and not abducted. And that is obviously a very significant distinction. It is also true that the court found otherwise, and my prosecution source says that the other several hundred kids did include cases of abduction.
None of which fundamentally indicts the foreign adoption program. But it seems an inescapable fact that a byproduct of the program is that healthy baby girls have been turned into a commodity, as the very people who have participated in the trafficking have told us.
Peter
Okay, I surrender. Peter is incapable of conceding that his reporting of this tragic story might be colored through his rhetoric to portray international adoption and adoptive families in a negative manner. At best this will be a verbal stalemate, and he is much better than me at quickly crafting a reply which redirects my argument.
The CCAA made an announcement today stating that no abducted children were placed with adoptive families from the U.S. You can read the AP version of this story HERE. For a clear, and not so happy interpretation of this announcement see Brian Stuy's analysis on research-china.org.
Sorry for the long boring post. Anybody out there still reading? Post a comment and let me know you're there.
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