You gotta have balls of steel to be a journalist in China.
According to a new report, several Chinese reporters covering the stabbing death of a U.S. volleyball coach’s father-n-law had their notebooks and at least one tape recorder confiscated after a news conference held by Team U.S.A. Volleyball. The players had been discussing the impact of the murder on the team.
Government confiscation of notebooks and equipment is a common occurrence for Chinese journalists covering protests or other ‘undesirable activities’, but it was supposedly the first time this has happened at an Olympic venue.
Also, the Chinese appear so intent on painting nothing but rosy pictures around the Games. The word Olympics is not uttered anywhere in the local coverage of the U.S. volleyball coach’s murdered father-in-law.
Reports center on the death of “an American tourist” without any mention that the ‘tourist’ was in Beijing for the Olympics.
We give thanks every day that we have the freedoms that we do in our country.
[Image via Pacific Coast News Online.]
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