Chinese officials sorry for blocking media at blast site

City officials in northeastern China apologized to local journalists after authorities were shown pushing them and trying to obstruct reporting from the site of a deadly explosion, in a rare acknowledgment of state aggression against members of the media.

The city of Sanhe in Hebei province issued a public apology on Thursday after authorities were shown harassing reporters from state-run China Central Television (CCTV) during a live broadcast near the site of a suspected gas leak explosion that killed at least seven people and injured 27 others on Wednesday.

Harassment of journalists, especially foreign reporters, is common in China but almost never acknowledged by the state.

A statement on Sanhe’s official website expressed “deep regret” over the treatment of the CCTV reporters and other media workers. It said authorities were trying to remove the journalists from the site because they were concerned about a potential gas leak.

“The poor communication skills of our frontline staff and their rough and simplistic methods caused misunderstandings among journalists and doubts among the public, resulting in a negative social impact,” it said.

The incident, shown live during the midday newscast, was a rare off-script moment for China’s tightly controlled state media. Beijing regards the media as propaganda tools and regularly issues directives about topics that are off-limits for coverage.

The All-China Journalists Association released a statement on Wednesday

defending the journalists’ rights to report from disaster sites, but fell short of explicitly condemning the Sanhe authorities’ actions.

China’s harassment of journalists is often directed at foreign reporters. Earlier this month, a Dutch journalist and a camera operator were detained while reporting on a protest outside an investment bank in southwestern Sichuan province. Authorities shoved the journalist to the ground and used umbrellas to block the camera.

Foreign journalists are also often followed by plainclothes police, especially when reporting from areas considered sensitive by the Chinese government, such as the far-western Xinjiang region.

Such incidents are regularly condemned by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, a professional group.

But the Chinese Foreign Ministry, which is the point of contact for foreign journalists in the country, has never, in recent memory, publicly acknowledged or apologized for the harassment.

China is also the country with the most imprisoned journalists — 44 in 2023, said a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Over the past few years, China has also increasingly restricted journalists’ access to politicians and officials of any kind.

This year, Beijing canceled the annual news conference by Premier Li Qiang — a 30-year tradition that constituted one of the rare times a top Chinese leader took questions from journalists.