“Is the job of BBC journalists to report news or fabricate news?” asked Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian today, in response to UK Prime Minister Sunak’s anti-China remarks on Monday.
Regarding the incident of a BBC journalist who was reportedly arrested and beaten, Zhao explained that the man was among people at a protest asked to leave by police. The BBC employee did not leave and did not identify himself as a journalist. After being detained, he identified himself and was allowed to go. “The BBC immediately twisted the story and massively propagated the narrative that its journalist had been ‘arrested’ and ‘beaten’ by policy while he was working, simply to try to paint China as the guilty party. This deliberate distortion of truth is all too familiar as part of the BBC’s distasteful playbook.” [emphasis added]
