Update | Chinese state media step up rhetoric on 'illegal' Hong Kong demonstrations
At first, reports about Occupy Central were scant, then, as they grew, took on an increasingly negative tone
Hong Kong’s caring and well-behaved protesters may have earned a good name for themselves as global media zooms in on how they recycle rubbish and say sorry for blocking roads. But the mainland paints an entirely different picture.
At first, television coverage of the protests in the state media was confined to presenters reading brief statements with no video, and text reports with no photos. In the print medium, the China Media Project, backed by the University of Hong Kong, reported only 20 mainland newspaper articles had appeared on the subject after the first two days, and most of them were based on official reports from Xinhua, with authorities condemning the protesters and emphasising the illegality of their traffic blocks. There was apparently no mention of the police’s use of tear gas in those early reports.
But then Beijing’s propaganda machine apparently became more involved, as more reports came out highlighting the negative impact of the rallies and putting the blame squarely on the organisers. At least 10 articles were produced by Xinhua and China News Service on Thursday alone.
The reports gave prominence to the protests’ effect on the city’s retail businesses, catering, medical system, banking and finance, tourism and even fresh food supplies. Xinhua quoted a woman on her way to a supermarket in Causeway Bay as saying she had difficulty getting fresh fruits and vegetables because trucks could not get to the market because protesters were blocking the roads.
A jeweller in Tsim Sha Tsui told Xinhua that the week-long National Day holiday on the mainland, which began on Wednesday, was supposed to boost his business with mainland tourists, but because of the protests, he had been losing money every day since the holiday began.
A China News Service report said an old woman could not get to hospital in time to see her sick relative before she died because of the blocked traffic. The same report mentioned a family’s taxi ride that should have taken 10 minutes, but took five hours.