Does this article sound natural in English?

No, forgive me Ori, no offense, but as an erstwhile writer myself, it's awful, might take me all day to critique so I hope you won't pursue that request. But if you insist I could give you a few examples but I am hoping you won't, the comp isn't yours, you merely found it somewhere

Incidentally that's Deprivation

Thank you for your opinion, Dale.

Well, at least I can hope someone come to edit the first passage:

Sir Harold Evans is one of the world's most revered journalists, in 2000 named by International Press Institute's Fifty World Press Freedom Heroes of the Past Fifty Years. In 2004, he was knighted by the British Crown for Services to Journalism.

Hope that helps Ori, though some guesswork

I like long sentences, would have "….of the Past Fifty Years, in 2004 knighted by the British Crown for….."

Cool!
To make it a long sentence is to make it more graceful here, obviously.

It is a joy to see that a grammatically magical hand's moving around.

Now Dale, please relax and sit back. Let's see someone else go through hardship to edit the second passage:

He wasn't knighted by a "crown", or even a "Crown", but by the Queen (of England, perhaps, if writing for an international audience).

I did a CtrlF, C and I wasn't able to come up with any instances of "a crown" or even a "Crown".

What it does say, at least in one place, is,

In 2004, he was knighted by the British Crown for services to journalism.

I'm pretty sure, Dale, the intended meaning is this one,

2 : to make bad : corrupt; especially : to corrupt morally

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/depravation

With a quick scan.

Sir Harold Evans is one of the most revered journalists in the world. He was named one of International Press Institute's 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past fifty years in 2000. In 2004, he was knighted by the British Crown for services to journalism. [okay]

Therefore it is both shocking and sad to see Sir Harold Evans lose his cool and attack Chinese Americans who had been critical of Ping Fu's memoir. Below is an English translation of an article written by Dr. Shimin Fang (Fang Zhouzi) in response to Harold Evans' attack. [okay]

Fang Zhouzi is certainly no stranger to the British media. Last November he [just ??] won the combined Nature and Sense About Science inaugural John Maddox Prize for standing up for science. [okay]

For background information, please read my previous diaries: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, and Part IX. [okay]

Below is a full English translation of Dr. Fang's article. The original article was written in Chinese and published on Dr. Fang's own blog. [okay]

Harold Evans is a famous British journalist. How famous is he? In 2000, he was named one of International Press Institute's 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past fifty years. In 2004, he was knighted by the Queen for services to journalism. When he was a young man, he was a well-known British investigative reporter. He was the first to report many of the headline events of the day, and earned [his] a reputation for his sense of justice and his daring reporting. Later he emigrated to the United States, served as editor-in-chief for the Atlantic Monthly, and then for U.S. News and World Report. Currently he is editor-at-large for Reuters. His wife Tina Brown is also a heavyweight of the U.S. press, an editor for both Newsweek and the Daily Beast. [okay]

This greatly respected sage of the Western press, recently wrote a commentary on the Daily Beast titled "the persecution of Ping Fu." In this commentary he denounced the criticism of Ping Fu's memoir by world-wide Chinese community as a persecution of her. Evans' wife Tina Brown has been an important supporter of Ping Fu. She had [ or has] promoted Ping Fu's memoir on the National Public Radio in the United States. Her newspaper, the Daily Beast, has also been heavily promoting the book. This newspaper was among the first to publish a report of the criticism of Ping Fu, but it quoted the criticism out of context in an attempt to label the criticism as an organized smear campaign, in clear violation of journalistic ethics. Evans had himself conducted an interview of Ping Fu on behalf of Reuters, but never questioned the legend-like stories told by Ping Fu. So it is no surprise that he would come out again and continue to speak on behalf of Ping Fu. What is surprising, however, is the horrific writing style and journalistic incompetency displayed by him that is completely at odds with his [sagely] image as a sage in the field of journalism. [okay]

====================

That's enough.

Evans focused on the large number of one-star reviews on the Amazon website of Ping Fu's memoir Bend, not Break. Initially, Ping Fu's memoir received mostly five-star (highest) reviews, written by Americans. At the end of last month, hundreds of negative reviews, most apparently written by Chinese Americans, began to appear and pulled the average rating to less than 2 stars. This seemingly unusual phenomenon actually has a very simple explanation: at the end of last month, I began to criticize Ping Fu's memoir (Note by translator: on microblog, a Chinese version of twitter), which attracted attention to this book. Because I have a lot of followers on microblog (Note by translator: Fang Zhouzi has a few million followers on microblog), it is not surprising that a few hundred of them who are also Amazon users would go there and write negative book reviews. But this was not how Evans thought. He intentionally made no mention of my name in the article (Why is it intentionally? Because previous reports about the incident, including the The Daily Beast reports and Ping Fu's response either named me explicitly, or referred to my article implicitly, so it is impossible for Evans to not know), but attributed the emergence of a large number of negative book reviews to two possible reasons:

1. Sockpuppets. Evans claimed that, one only needs an e-mail account to post a book review on the Amazon website. Thus, a person can use multiple mailboxes to register more than one account, posing as two people, 20 people, or even 100 people writing different book reviews. He complained bitterly about Amazon's "openness" and its ineffective handling of complaints. As a former investigative reporter, Evans did not even bother to check the basic requirements set up by Amazon to post book reviews there. It takes more than an email address to post book reviews on Amazon. One must also have purchased something through the Amazon website (not necessarily the book being reviewed). Through the purchase, the user will have already left a real name and address with Amazon. Although book reviews can be posted with a pseudonym, but the identity of the reviewer is real. It is very hard for a user who post comments on Amazon to have two accounts, let alone one hundred accounts.

Lin was the first negative reviewer of Ping Fu's memoir on Amazon, and continued to add the most detailed discussion to her review. Her review had the most comments and was rated most useful by readers, thus was automatically placed at the top of the web page. This brought special attention from Evans, who attacked Lin with the horrible line "Male, female, or hermaphrodite." Lin herself said in her book review that she is a woman, and this can be easily verified by Amazon. Evans also claimed that although the book review written by Lin was negative, she gave a fake five star. There had been some negative reviews that gave five stars for irony, but Lin's review had always been one-star. It is clear that Evans did a very sloppy journalistic work. After repeated complaints from Ping Fu's PR team, Amazon deleted Lin's review on grounds of being "visually disruptive." Lin later posted a new review with an ironic five-star, but this was well after Evans published his article.

Yes, that is right. The point I was making is that when someone receives a knighthood that honour is conferred on them personally by the monarch and we say "Joe Bloggs was knighted by the Queen in 1966 for services to the fish trade". In fact a domestic and Commonwealth readership would not need the phrase "by the Queen" because this is understood.

"The Crown" is an abstract entity encountered in discussions about the British Constitution. It is the embodiment of the power of the constitutional monarchy. It is the Crown which prosecutes criminal cases, receives government revenues, owns certain kinds of public land, etc.

The Crown is a "corporation sole" that, in the Commonwealth realms and any of its provincial or state sub-divisions, represents the legal embodiment of executive, legislative, or judicial governance. It evolved first in the United Kingdom as a separation of the literal crown and property of the nation state from the person and personal property of the monarch. The concept spread via British colonisation and is now rooted in the legal lexicon of the other 15 independent realms. In this context it should not be confused with any physical crown, such as those of the British state regalia, nor with the actual monarch.

Why, thank you Ori.. Rare response

Why, thank you again Ori. Some tear me to shreds for less

Most sincerely flattered

That's about all I do

Yes let's see….

Forgive me again Con but whom were you addressing

Of course, thanks JTT, that does make sense doesn't it

Anyone who read "knighted by the British Crown" and thought it was correct usage.

Thank you JTT.
I knew it is okay. It's time to open an advanced English course in A2K College. Dale has given us a good example.

Excellent!

Laughingly of course

I think "by" should be removed from "in 2000 named by International Press Institute's Fifty World Press Freedom Heroes of the Past Fifty Years."
But I am not sure whether it should be "in 2000 named one of International Press Institute's Fifty World Press Freedom Heroes of the Past Fifty Years"

Agreed.

I don't know if anyone is interested, but any Brit will tell you that being "knighted by the Queen" is not necessarily a certain indication of a person's worth or goodness. Certain kinds of people get knighted quasi-automatically - senior civil servants and military officers who reach a certain grade for example. The decision to make the award is not made personally by the Queen, but by politicians who "recommend" it to her. Under the terms of the constitutional monarchy, the monarch must follow the recommendations made by Parliament, or risk precipitating a "constitutional crisis".

In the case of living people a knighthood can be withdrawn, on the recommendation of a committee of Parliament called the Honours Forfeiture Committee, which recently stripped former Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Fred Goodwin of his knighthood.

If a former knight is dead, nothing can be done, as in the case of Sir Jimmy Savile, a former TV entertainer, disc jockey, and prominent charity worker, who has turned out to be one of Britain's worst ever serial child sex offenders, with over 500 victims. Nobody calls him "Sir Jimmy" any more though.