Four Chinese journalists have been suspended after inadvertently – and incorrectly – announcing the resignation of president Xi Jinping.
A typographical error in the opening sentence of a report about Xi’s
recent tour of Africa meant that instead of informing readers about a
“speech” (zhi ci) given by China’s commander-in-chief, reporters referred to his resignation (ci zhi).
The story was published on Friday by the official China News Service and subsequently reprinted, before being corrected, by a number of leading websites.
Among those reportedly punished
for the gaffe was Song Fangcan, the news agency’s bureau chief in South
Africa, where Xi had been speaking at the end of an five-day visit to
the continent.
The incident punctured an unusually fawning period of press coverage
about Xi, even by the standards of China’s heavily controlled state
media.
Last Friday, the front page of the People’s Daily, the Communist party mouthpiece, was smothered with Xi-related news, with 11 of the 12 headlines starting with the president’s name.
Page two showed similar ebullience: it featured no less than 9 photographs of the man Chinese spin doctors have dubbed Xi Dada, which means Uncle or Big Daddy Xi.
Even the Southern Weekly, until recently one of China’s most respected broadsheets, appears to have caught Xi fever.
Earlier this month it published a 13,000-word eulogy
to the Chinese president on its front page, causing consternation among
liberals who had viewed the newspaper as one of the last bastions of
serious reporting.
An editor at one state-run newspaper told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post the mistake would be viewed as a “serious blunder” but would not end their careers.
“Some people will receive a warning and might be suspended from work
for a while to show to the propaganda department that they take such a
mistake very seriously,” the editor said. “After a while, when the
incident is forgotten, they will be able to resume their duties.”
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