China using Covid-19 as ‘yet another way to control journalists’, media group says

Name: Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan sentenced to four years in jail for Wuhan coronavirus reports
Uploaded: 2021-03-01T08:01:32.000Z
Duration: 3 min 32 s
Description: Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan sentenced to four years in jail for Wuhan coronavirus reports

Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China says in annual report that Beijing has introduced extra surveillance and restrictions to obstruct reporters

Some 42 per cent of respondents had been made to leave a place or denied access for health and safety reasons when they presented no risk

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An area of Tonghua, in the northeastern province of Jilin, is disinfected on February 19 after an outbreak. Beijing has sought to promote its official narrative on the pandemic and stamp out criticism. Photo: Xinhua

Agence France-Presse

Published: 4:01pm, 1 Mar 2021Updated: 4:01pm, 1 Mar 2021

China is using the Covid-19 pandemic as “yet another way to control journalists”, a press group said on Monday, warning that Beijing had introduced extra surveillance and restrictions for health reasons as tools to frustrate reporters’ work.

Although the country has largely brought the coronavirus outbreak under control since it emerged in late 2019, Beijing has raced to promote an official narrative centred on its efficient measures and stamped out criticism about its early handling of the pandemic.

“As China’s propaganda machine struggled to regain control of the narrative around this public health disaster, foreign press outlets were repeatedly obstructed in their attempts to cover the pandemic,” the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said (FCCC) in its annual report.

“China has used the pandemic as yet another way to control journalists.”

03:32

Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan sentenced to four years in jail for Wuhan coronavirus reports

Strict Covid-19 measures had been regularly used to block or threaten reporters, the media group said, with correspondents “forced to abandon reporting trips after being told to leave or be quarantined”.

Some 42 per cent of respondents said they had been made to leave a place or denied access for health and safety reasons when they presented no risk.

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