Yahoo! gives back to journos it helps oppress

Yahoo's plan to donate $1 million over 10 years to Stanford University's prestigious John S. Knight fellowship program for journalists has quickly come under attack.

Announced just last week, Yahoo plans to fund an annual fellowship for mid-career journalists from foreign countries where the press is not free. The future fellows will carry the title of both Knight Fellow and Yahoo International Fellow during their time at Stanford.

What's the rub? It seems Knight alumni are up in arms over Yahoo's controversial business policies in China, where one-sixth of the world's population lives without a free press, and where Yahoo is helping to reduce the candidate pool for its own fellowship. In 2004, Yahoo supplied information to Chinese authorities that helped lead to the arrest of 38 year-old journalist Shi Tao, who is now serving a 10-year prison sentence for "divulging state secrets abroad." In a report released last month, Human Rights Watch says that Yahoo has aided Chinese authorities in the arrest and imprisonment of at least three other journalists in recent years: Li Zhi, Jiang Lijun, and Wang Xiaoning.

I suspect those are four reporters who won't be applying for Yahoo's new fellowship.