The Wall Street Journal on March 19 reported that as China’s government promotes its successes in containing the coronavirus to audiences abroad, a heated backlash against a state-media reporter’s coverage of the pathogen shows that Beijing still faces a tough task selling its narrative at home. The Chinese authorities were glorifying as heroic Liao Jun, a veteran reporter with the official Xinhua News Agency, for her coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in Hubei province. They accused her of, in fact, helping propagate fictions that clouded the severity of the outbreak in its early days. It said the outrage was sparked by Ms. Liao’s appearance at a news conference this month organized by the Chinese government’s publicity office. Gu Wanming, a retired Xinhua reporter, posted a widely circulated essay on a public social-media account where he said: “If you have a little conscience, then you should refuse the accolade and decline to speak, otherwise people will say that you ‘trod on the blood of others to ascend the podium.’” The essay has since disappeared.
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