Amid censorship outrage, China's state-run TV reports that "Google Porn" causes memory loss.

By Xeni Jardin at 6:35 pm Thursday, Jun 25

A "man on the street" who turned out to be a intern for China's state-run CCTV appeared on a CCTV newscast to testify about the evils of porn websites. China's controversial "Green Dam" censorship program is purportedly designed to block such memory-erasing evils for the protection of Chinese citizens.

Gao (shown here during the broadcast) complained that the pornographic content on Google.cn was particularly harmful. He said in the interview, 'I have this fellow student and he's been curious about these kinds of things. He visited porn Web sites and ended up becoming absent-minded for a while.'

Which sounds pretty authentic. Viewing porn sites causes memory loss. Not a known syndrome but possible, possible.

Some viewers doubted the truth of Gao's comments and suspected that he had been coached beforehand. So an Internet search was carried out -- there is no place to hide -- and it appears that he is a current intern with CCTV. His page on the popular Chinese social networking site Xiaonei.com seemed to support the claim that he was working for the state broadcaster at the time of the interview.

Google China mess gets messier (China Economic Review, via @rmack)