After Yahoo! turned over information about Internet search records to the Chinese government that led to the arrests of journalists in 2004, protests arose from the international media and the U.S. Congress. So last month, when Yahoo! offered and Stanford accepted a $1 million gift for the University’s Knight Fellowship program to support press freedom in what many saw as an act of atonement, some critics worried the money came from a tainted source.

A barrage of emails ensued as past Knight Fellows from around the world wrestled with an ethical dilemma. The debate over the donation has largely died down, and the program’s administrator says it is keeping the money, but the argument has become a symbol of constraints on press freedom abroad.

“I have accepted this fellowship because I know there are no strings attached to it from Yahoo!,” said Imtiaz Ali, the first Yahoo! International Fellow, a BBC reporter based in Pakistan, in an email. “If the Yahoo! money provides an invaluable opportunity to one journalist to learn more, it’s not a bad deal.”

James Bettinger, director of the Knight Fellowships, told The Daily that program administrators were cognizant of the Yahoo! and China controversy when they deliberated on whether to accept the gift.

“It served a need in our program, which is to provide stable funding for international fellows,” he said. “It left the selection process entirely up to us. We thought this was a good thing.”

The email exchange prompted an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, a piece on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and posts on a prominent journalism blog.

The Knight Fellowship program counts some of the nation’s most distinguished journalists as alumni.

Kevin Fagan, a current fellow and San Francisco Chronicle reporter, said newspapers frequently print ads from morally questionable entities, such as cigarette and alcohol manufacturers.

“It certainly is a conversation worth having, but I didn’t see any question about taking the money from the get-go,” he said.

The Knight Fellowship program, one of the most esteemed in journalism, brings selected journalists to the University every year to collaborate and to study. Fellows are typically reporters who are midway in their careers.

Journalists in countries with restricted press freedom will receive the new international fellowship, funded to last 10 years.

Ali said that constraints on press freedom remain an issue of concern through the developing world.

“Three of my journalist friends have been killed just in the last two years in the line of their duties,” he wrote in an email to The Daily. “I know how difficult the life of their widows and children is now.”

China’s record on human rights has come under fire after recent crackdowns. An August Human Rights Watch report outlined how user information from Yahoo! has allowed the Chinese to crack down on journalists who had written or posted pro-democracy articles.

An alumni email list had rarely been used until the Knight Fellowship program made the announcement on Sept. 18. The dormant list exploded with debate, with a sizable majority of posters in support of accepting the grant.

International journalists were more likely to support accepting the donation, Fagan said, because they have seen firsthand the consequences of government intimidation.

“They seemed to feel most strongly about it,” he said. “You would think they would feel feistier about this, but they were saying there’s no question and we’ll take what we can get.”

But turning down the gift after it had already been accepted was not on the table, Bettinger said.

Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang said that his company was committed to supporting “open access to information on a global basis.”

“We hope that fellows visiting from press-restrictive nations will have the opportunity to bring change and enlightenment to their home countries,” he said in the statement announcing the gift.

Still, some former fellows, like retired Eugene, Ore. Register-Guard reporter Don Bishoff, believed that taking the money sent the wrong message.

“For me, the underlying principle is that it is from a company that was complicit in fingering a dissident,” Bishoff told the San Francisco Chronicle.

But Srinija Srinivasan, Yahoo!’s editor in chief, told The New York Times that while Yahoo! was “profoundly distressed by the arrest” of Shi, the endowment was “not about regret.”

Bettinger said it was good news that a prominent Internet company was taking a more active role in journalism education.

“This is, to my knowledge, the first instance of any of the Internet news providers making a contribution to this program or similar journalism programs,” he said. “We think it is appropriate for companies like this to take responsibility for the improvement of journalism.”

Ali, the recipient of the Yahoo! gift, said he was excited for the chance to study at Stanford and pledged that he “will always stand by my fellow journalists who face oppression anywhere in the world, no matter whoever is the oppressor or helper in his or her suppression.”