Foreign journalists harassed by Chinese citizens over Zhengzhou flooding coverage
Incidents are a "sad sign of increasing anger and suspicion towards foreign media," writes one journalist.
RHODA KWAN
12:17, 26 JULY 2021
Correspondents for several international media outlets were harassed by citizens on the streets of Zhengzhou over the weekend as they covered the aftermath of
severe flooding in the Chinese city last Thursday.
The incidents came as social media platform Weibo saw a stream of angry posts criticising the BBC’s China Correspondent Robin Brant for a report that questioned government policies after a dozen people died in a train carriage amid the flooding.
“We don’t know why they were left so vulnerable,” Brant said in a report last Friday, adding that Beijing had warned other local governments to examine their own preparedness and metro regulations.
Video footage circulated online during the flooding show passengers inundated up to their chests in crowded train carriages.
Chinese netizens on the country’s Twitter-like Weibo platform have accused Brant of being a “rumour-mongering foreigner” and “seriously distorting the facts” in his reports on the flooding.
“BBC reporter Robin Brant has appeared in disaster-stricken areas of our city many times, and has seriously distorted the facts. If you find this person, please call the police immediately,” one post on Saturday read.
The next day, Beijing Bureau chief for the LA Times Alice Su and Deutsche Welle’s China correspondent Mathias Boelinger were surrounded by an angry crowd who mistakenly believed Boelinger to be Brant.
“They kept pushing me yelling that I was a bad guy and that I should stop smearing China. One guy [tried] to snatch my phone,” Boelinger tweeted following the incident.
“You should have a positive view on China!” one man told Boelinger, a video circulating on Weibo showed.
The pair were interviewing shopkeepers in the city on the challenges they faced and “insufficient” help from the government to drain their premises underground, Su tweeted.
Correspondents for Al Jazeera and the Associated Press also tweeted about being harassed by crowds, who took videos of them and called the authorities.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu tweeted that the incidents were a “sad sign of increasing anger and suspicion towards foreign media in China.”
Correspondents for several international media outlets were harassed by citizens on the streets of Zhengzhou over the weekend as they covered the aftermath of severe flooding in the Chinese city last Thursday. The incidents came as social media platform Weibo saw a stream of angry posts...
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