Reporter Who Interviewed Jack Ma Resigns

Reporter Who Interviewed Jack Ma Resigns

In another twist to the much-blogged about Jack Ma interview, The South China Morning post reporter who interviewed the founder and executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has resigned, according to a statement on the newspaper’s website early this morning.

Liu Yi, the reporter who interviewed Mr. Ma, resigned on July 19, according to astatement on the SCMP’s site. The interview generated controversy online as Mr. Ma was quoted as saying the 1989 crackdown on protesters in Tiananmen Square was “the most correct decision”.

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Jack Ma, seen in a May 2013 photo.

Mr. Ma’s comments about Tiananmen were removed for a few hours last week from the SCMP’s Chinese-language transcript after the comments were widely criticized on Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like service—of which Alibaba agreed to buy an 18% stake earlier this year. The quote resurfaced later after bloggers pointed out it had disappeared.

In reaction to the quote, Jack Ma said in a statement on Thursday: “I was trying to describe the circumstances under which I made tough decisions when I was CEO of the company. Regrettably my remarks as reported [by the SCMP] did not reflect what I told the reporter, and caused a terrible misunderstanding.”

In a second statement released early Saturday on an official Alibaba Group microblog, the company said: “We don’t intend to question the SCMP’s motivation for the interview, but, according to the sound recordings of the interview, we found that the root [of the problem] is that the SCMP quoted improperly.”

Alibaba also said it looked forward to the results of an SCMP investigation and expressed regret at the resignation of the journalist.

The SCMP said it continues to stand by the original article. It added: “Without authorization, [Liu Yi] accessed the system and replaced the editor-approved article with an altered version in which Mr. Ma’s reference made in relation to June 4 was removed.”

Ms. Yi had been suspended for making the “unauthorized alterations to company property,” but she chose to resign on Friday, the SCMP said.

Ms. Yi could not immediately be reached for comment.

–Paul Mozur and Olivia Geng contributed to this post.