Taipei (The China Post/ANN) - When the Hong Kong-based TV station ATV reported on its July 6 primetime 6pm newscast that former mainland China president Jiang Zemin had died, the news was taken seriously. World media soon relayed footage from the ATV report, and some were already running highlights of Jiang's life and of the eventful years in China under Jiang's rule.
People had reasons to believe in ATV's credibility. Its major shareholder, Wang Zheng, is well-connected to the mainland government. According to Hong Kong English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post, Wang is a member of Beijing's top advisory organisation and a "princeling" -- he is the stepson of a deceased mainland leader. Some media even reported Wang to be related to Jiang. When Wang became ATV's major shareholder, the media joked about ATV becoming the "China Central Television in Hong Kong". It was widely believed that the "Beijing insider" ATV cited in the report was Wang himself.
But as Beijing and its state media remained silent hours after the ATV story, it became clear that the TV station had not broken the important news but rather became the news itself. It quietly called off a scheduled 9:30pm special on Jiang's life it had announced during the newscast and changed the black-and-white logo -- apparently to express grief over Jiang's death -- in the upper right corner of its broadcasts back to the original reddish orange.
The real slap in the face came a day later when the Beijing state media outlet Xinhua refuted the report as "pure rumour", and the Hong Kong China News Agency slammed the ATV with "outrage" for a major breach of journalistic ethics. The ATV later retracted the story and apologised to the audience, Jiang and his family.
From its outset, the story read like any other newsroom blunder, albeit a colossal one, but Jiang's non-death incident highlighted the secretive nature of the communist country even in a matter as unambiguous as the life or death of a person.
ATV was actually not the first news outlet to run the report of Jiang's death on July 6. The rumour had been spreading like wildfire for hours among mainland netizens. The website of a major news outlet posted a huge black-and-white banner on its front page to mark "the death of a great leader".
Instead of simply refuting these reports and clarifying Jiang's status, Beijing took websites reporting on Jiang's death off the Internet and put one of the most China-friendly media outlets in a hard spot. In a true Kafkaesque touch, the mainland blocked online searches for such terms as "Jiang Zemin", "death", "ATV" and the diseases attributed by various reports as having caused Jiang's death. As some quick-witted Chinese netizens had pointed out, even death and the former president can be "harmonised" (read censored) by the Great Firewall of China.
Jiang's health status and the reason behind such secrecy and high alert are still unclear. While some observers speculate that Jiang's well-being could be a sensitive matter as Beijing is gearing up for leadership transition in 2012, others point out that his post-retirement influence has been much less far-reaching than that of his predecessor Deng Xiaoping, and therefore such a heavy-handed approach is uncalled for. Beijing's slamming of friendly media over what seemed to be their overzealous attempts to commemorate the death of Jiang can be seen as a sign that its censorship machine has become overly sensitive and even paranoid.
ATV shareholder Wang's claim that he knew nothing about Jiang's death and that he learned of the news only from TV had a lot of journalists feeling sold out. The South China Morning Post cited an "ATV insider" as saying that the station would normally not run sensitive, mainland-related stories without checking with sources, and that "the only possibility was it (the news being cleared to air) was imposed by the top echelon". The event might also have inadvertently highlighted the increased influence mainland investors have on the newsroom of the Hong Kong TV station. The report of Jiang's death might prove to be false but it is no less revealing.
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