When deadly riots broke out in China last week, the Chinese government sprang into message control mode. It choked off the Internet, blocked Twitter, and deleted updates and videos from social networking sites. At the same time, it invited foreign journalists to take a tour of the area. That’s right, it slammed the door in the face of new media — and offered traditional reporters a front row seat. The Chinese have clearly learned the lessons of Iran. The same can’t be said about the New York Times’ Roger Cohen who, writing about covering the Iran uprising, recently mounted an attack on search engines, news aggregation, and “miracles of technology” such as Twitter and real-time video delivered via camera phones — the very tools that allowed millions of people around the world to bear witness to what was happening in Iran. How bizarre is that?