Ministry of Truth on Fire!
CCTV New building
My deepest condolences to the family of the firefighter who died on his duty, but it's also extremely fortunate that Mandarin Oriental Hotel (owned by cctv) is not completed yet so it's likely that nobody was actually inside the building.
But no sympathy for CCTV though, it deserves this, and with little bit of guilt, I was kind of hoping that the main building also catches the fire.
And I was amazed on how fast the social network like Twitter responded to this news. Pictures of the building on fire were already widely circulated less than half an hour after the fire, and official media were busy reporting another fire in Australia ... another prove to show that even the State thinks foreign lives are more valuable than Chinese.
I dunno, mate, I think you may be going a bit far with that last comment. It's naturally going to take a bit of time for all the news to get out, especially when it has to be filtered through the big harmonising machine, and there is a question of scale. The CCTV fire killed 1 and injured half a dozen in a single building over a period of six hours. The Victorian bushfires have lasted several days, destroyed entire towns, and killed close to 200, with the death toll expected to rise. And more bushfire-encouraging weather expected on the weekend, too, as if they hadn't already had enough.
Maybe I went a bit too far but what I really meant is the media censorship. The trend remained the same in the past decade - when something bad like mine disaster, shoe throwing in Cambridge or this case happened, it's kind of force of habit now, no matter what happens, first reaction from propaganda officials is always "to cover it up".
Then after a day or two, if they realise report that event is actually a good thing (like show throwing), then they report it; if it still remains a bad thing (like Obama's "facism and communism" remark), then they'll down play or simply censor it.
But I find it hard to understand who in right mind wants to cover up a fire disaster with possibly no casualties? When I saw the news being removed from headlines in main Chinese websites on the night it happened, at one moment I really suspected there maybe were a lot of people inside that building.
BTW, good on Kiwis for sending 100 firefighters and a helicopter to Aussie - although I'm bit worried what if similar things happened at home while they are in Aussie, recent weather here is also very hot a - hope that's just my bad month.
I agree that the censorship is pretty stupid, but some have commented that, like the shoe throwing, they wanted to cool things off while they figured out an official response. There's also the danger of rumour-mongering, and I have seen a few stupid comments about terrorism and insurance fraud thrown around, so minimising the news temporarily buys them a little time and space to figure out the real cause. Still doesn't change the fact that the censorship is stupid, but at least this time there's the possibility of some logic to it.