China's CCTV didn't cover its own tower's fire

BEIJING — Even before it was revealed Tuesday that an illegal fireworks display organized by China Central Television caused the spectacular fire that destroyed one of Beijing's new glass-and-steel landmarks, the state-run broadcaster was already the subject of its own firestorm on the Internet.

The inferno at CCTV's new, still-unoccupied headquarters complex laid bare a simmering anger and resentment toward the network for spending public money on grand construction projects and for continuing to broadcast government propaganda.

"As long as there aren't any injuries, let it burn. They don't need so many buildings (in) the first place," wrote one typical anonymous poster at the popular news portal Sohu.com.

Jeremy Glodkorn, editor of a Web site that tracks Chinese media, said that among the young, educated and urban, the stodgy network has long been a subject of ridicule because of its low production values and propagandistic news coverage.

In a statement posted on its Web site, the network said the employees staging their illegal pyrotechnics too close to the unfinished complex. It apologized for the damage the fire caused, saying it was deeply grieved "for the severe damage the fire caused to the country's property," according to The Associated Press.

But what Beijing residents could plainly see — the smoking shell of architect Rem Koolhaas' Mandarin Oriental Hotel — was harder to glimpse on the Internet in China, on television or in the city's newspapers. Koolhaas also designed the Seattle Public Library's downtown building.

There were no pictures on the front page of The Beijing News. The home page of Xinhua, the official news agency, featured a photo from another tragedy: a stampede in South Korea that left four people dead. Throughout the morning, CCTV's brief bulletins about the blaze omitted footage of the burning tower.

Even before the flames had been extinguished early Tuesday, images of the burning hotel had been removed from the country's main Internet portals. A directive sent out by propaganda officials left no room for error: "No photos, no video clips, no in-depth reports," read the memo, which instructed all media outlets to use only Xinhua's dispatches. "The news should be put on news areas only and the comments posting areas should be closed."

"Many people were very happy and rejoiced at the fire; some said it's good that it burned," said Li Datong, a former editor at the Communist Party newspaper China Youth Daily, who was fired three years ago for criticizing government censorship. "The government isn't happy with these kinds of emotions, so they strictly controlled all reports."

Wang Xiaofeng, a popular blogger, could not help but note the irony of CCTV employees accidentally creating one of the biggest stories of the year and then failing to cover it. "They didn't feel the urgency to report the news even though the fire was up to their eyebrows," he wrote. "In this case of breaking news, the official media has been defeated by the citizen media."