William Gallo for Voice of America
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA – In six months, throngs of foreign media will arrive in Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics. They may be welcomed by a wide-ranging Chinese government campaign to foment public anger against Western journalists, who have been increasingly harassed because of their reporting.
Chinese state media, diplomats, and other officials have conducted a months-long effort to stoke hostility toward reporters and outlets they accuse of spreading lies about China. Recently, Beijing has targeted the BBC, which has done extensive reporting on China’s reeducation camps for Uyghur Muslims in the western region of Xinjiang.
But reporters from many other publications have been caught in the fray. Last month, angry crowds surrounded and briefly detained a pair of German and U.S. journalists reporting on floods in the Chinese province of Henan. The locals accused the reporters of spreading anti-China rumors. Since then, several news outlets reported receiving death threats and other intimidating phone calls.
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