Independent Reporting On Mu5735 Disaster Blocked, Criticized, And Censored

//Journalists attempting to report from the scene of the crash have been denied access to the area. Journalist Du Qiang lamented that Chinese citizens today demand that everyone wait for “official announcements,” whereas in years gone by, they understood the need for investigative journalism:

Du’s point that censorship and media constraints are, in part, a product of public demand was illustrated by the blowback China’s People magazine received after publishing intimate portraits of the disaster victims. Netizens accused the publication of “eating buns dipped in human blood.” As Fang Kecheng explained in his NewsLab newsletter, the phrase has been appropriated by Chinese netizens to accuse media outlets of capitalizing on victims’ trauma—whereas the phrase as it originally appeared in Lu Xun’s 1919 short story “Medicine” criticized the ignorance and apathy that plagued late imperial China.//