As China stifles coverage, its journalists fight back
When Jacob Wang saw reports circulating online recently suggesting that life was getting better in Wuhan, China — the center of the coronavirus outbreak — he was irate.
Wang, a journalist for a state-run newspaper in China, knew that Wuhan was still in crisis, as he had traveled there to chronicle the failures of the government firsthand. He took to social media to set the record straight, writing a damning post last month about sick patients struggling to get medical care amid a dysfunctional bureaucracy.
“People were left to die, and I am very angry about that,” Wang said in an interview. “I’m a journalist, but I’m also an ordinary human being.”
The Chinese government, eager to claim victory in what China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has described as a “people’s war” against the virus, is leading a sweeping campaign to purge the public sphere of dissent, censoring news reports, harassing citizen journalists and shutting down news sites.
Chinese journalists, buoyed by an outpouring of support from the public and widespread calls for free speech, are fighting back in a rare challenge to the ruling Communist Party.
They are publishing hardhitting exposes describing government cover-ups and failures in the health care system. They are circulating passionate calls for press freedom. They are using social media to draw attention to injustice and abuse, circumventing an onslaught of propaganda orders.
Many flocked to Wuhan before the city imposed a lockdown in late January, setting up makeshift news bureaus in hotels. Wearing hazmat suits and goggles, they ventured into hospital wards to interview patients and doctors, submitting nervously to tests for the coronavirus after their visits.
Some were overwhelmed by the pressures of censorship as well as the atmosphere of death and despair.
“You really couldn’t sleep at night seeing all these horrible stories,” said Wang, who reported from Wuhan during the lockdown. “It was really upsetting.”
The journalists’ stories have stoked widespread anger in China, painting a portrait of a government that was slow to confront the virus and worked steadfastly to silence anyone who tried to warn about its spread.
Profile, a general interest magazine in China, uncovered a severe shortage of testing kits in Wuhan, provoking fury from residents who demanded to know how the government could be so ill-prepared.
Xi, who rose to power in 2012, has worked to more tightly control the news media than his predecessors, demanding that it first and foremost serve as a party mouthpiece. Under Xi, the government has moved swiftly to shut down critical reporting during major disasters, including the chemical explosion in the port city of Tianjin in 2015 that killed 173 people. But authorities have struggled to rein in coverage of the coronavirus outbreak that has affected the lives of 1.4 billion people nationwide, in part because the Chinese public has resorted to innovative methods to preserve a record of what has transpired.
“This time, the government’s control of free speech has directly damaged the interests and lives of ordinary people,” said Li Datong, a retired newspaper editor in Beijing. “Everyone knows this kind of big disaster happens when you don’t tell the truth.”