Chinese news media is reporting that the food scare involving baozi was a story fabricated by a freelance reporter. The Associated Press writes:
A freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said. (Source: Beijing TV Reporter Arrested Over Cardboard-Filled Bun Hoax)
The question that comes immediately to mind is which story should you believe? Was this really a hoax, or is this an effort at damage control to save Chinese face? Either way, the mainstream media has not picked up on the fabrication story as enthusiastically as it did on the original story of contaminated food. As a result, the public will remember the original footage of cardboard being chopped up and used as a food substitute for a long time to come.
Behind the scenes, an even bigger question need answering. How is it that news standards are so low, that a freelance reporter can file a report to be viewed by millions without it passing through the scrutiny of the editorial process? Was there no one available to verify to the veracity of the original report?
A news story has not been blundered so badly since the Beijing Evening News, the capital’s largest-circulation newspaper, plagiarized an article from the satirical website The Onion. It translated Congress Threatens To Leave D.C. Unless New Capitol Is Built into Chinese, believing it to be an actual “news” story. In that satirical piece, Congress made demands to modernize the U.S. Capital to a state-of-the-art facility or they would relocate to Charlotte or Memphis. The parody features an architect’s rendering of a proposed futuristic Capitol complete with a retractable dome, a “Dancing Waters fountain” and “55 more luxury boxes than the current building.” The Evening News story even reproduced the illustration.
According to The San Francisco Chronicle (U.S. satire tricks Beijing paper), the Evening News editor in charge of international news, Yu Bin, “adamantly ruled out a correction and grew slightly obstreperous when pressed to comment on the article’s lack of truth.”
“How do you know whether or not we checked the source before we published the story?” Yu demanded in a phone interview. “How can you prove it’s not correct?”
The Onion’s article on relocating the Capital was featured alongside headlines such as “Sexual Tension Between Arafat, Sharon Reaches Breaking Point” and “Man Blames Hangover on Everything But How Much He Drank.”
If Chinese reporters are hard up for material and are looking for other articles to translate/copy, may we suggest the following gems about China from The Onion archives:
- Chinese Employers To Grant 15-Minute Maternity Break
- Chinese Factory Worker Can’t Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans
- That Chinese Girl In Office: ‘I Am Not Chinese’
And as a real test of whether or not the Chinese have a sense of humor, try grappling with The Onion’s Inforgraphic on China’s Olympic Bid.
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