Eric's Beijing Diary

Interesting. Yesterday, CCTV English did a full report on the nightly news regarding the death of Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore. This evening, they announced that the report had been a hoax. This has to be very embarrassing for CCTV, because it underscores the fact that much of their news comes from scanning other media rather than individual "shoe leather" reporting. But, to be fair, they are not alone. More and more young media wonks are basing their reports on stuff they have gathered from surfing the Internet rather than walking the streets and getting the information themselves. The Asia Wall Street Journal has been banned from the Bridge Cafe in Wudaokou now--the government won't allow them to display it, because they don't control it, but before Xi Jinping came to power and the Wall Street Journal was available, I used to read reports from time to time that were ridiculously ignorant. It was quite obvious from reading them that the writers thereof were sitting in New York and surfing the Internet. They sure didn't know much about China.