Chinese media scramble to cover US air crash
Outlets scramble to uncover details of the Chinese victims of Asiana Flight 214, with some reports thought to cross privacy line
The crash of Asiana Flight 214 in San Francisco triggered a competitive frenzy among the mainland media last week, as outlets scrambled to uncover compelling details about the victims and examine the overseas study tours had brought many passengers on board.
Of the Boeing 777's 290 passengers, 141 were Chinese, including the only fatalities. Three Chinese girls lost their lives, as a third succumbed to her injuries on Friday.
As has become the norm in such disasters, social media provided the first reports from the scene. Survivors rushed to Sino Weibo and other microblogs to publish pictures, thoughts and observations.
Xu Da, a general manager with the online shopping site Taobao Marketplace, was on board with his wife and son. When the jet neared the ground, "I heard the plane's engines roaring loudly again and my heart sank. This was not a good sign," Xu posted two days after the accident.
Xu and his family survived. After escaping the plane through a hole where the tail had broken off, he started to post live on Weibo. So did many other passengers, long before encountering any professional journalists. The public quickly discovered the Weibo accounts of the two students from Jiangshan Middle School, Zhejiang province, who died at the scene: Wang Linjia, 17, and Ye Mengyuan , 16.
The official China Youth Daily went overboard in its effort to show authorities' sympathy in one article on Tuesday.