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Chinese TV Reporter Had Staged Video About Buns Stuffed with Cardboard
freelance reporter for a Beijing television station has been detained for faking a hidden camera report about street vendors who used chemical-soaked cardboard to fill meat buns, local media said Thursday.
The report came amid a spate of real food scares involving toxic fish, tainted pork and egg yolks colored with a cancer-causing dye that have harmed China's reputation as an exporter and alarmed people at home.
The story, allegedly shot with a hidden camera, was broadcast on Beijing Television and China Central Television last week and created a buzz on the Internet, with people flooding chatrooms with comments expressing shock and disgust.
The state-run Beijing Youth Daily said that the creator of the fake news report, identified only by his surname Zi had been detained by police but did not say when.
Zi's footage appeared to show a makeshift kitchen where people made fluffy buns stuffed with 60 percent cardboard that had been softened by a bath of caustic soda and 40 percent fatty pork.
The paper said that in mid-June, Zi brought meat, flour, cardboard and other ingredients to a downtown Beijing neighborhood and had four people make the buns for him while he filmed the process. The report said Zi ``gave them the idea'' of mincing softened cardboard and adding it to the buns.
The newspaper said Beijing Television had publicly apologized for the fake news report and vowed to prevent inaccurate news coverage in the future.
However, a man surnamed Liu with the station president's office said he was unclear about the case. He refused to give his full name and referred calls to the public relations office, where the phone rang unanswered Thursday morning.
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Wed July 18, 2007 23:16 EDT
BEIJING (AP)
Customers buy steamed buns, called baozi, at a sidewalk stall in Beijing Thursday July 12, 2007. (AP Photo/Greg Baker) |