Beijing Foreign Ministry Sets the Record Straight on BBC and Sunak News Fabrication

Nov. 29, 2022 (EIRNS)—“Is the job of BBC journalists to report news or fabricate news?” demanded Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian today, in response to U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s anti-China remarks on Nov. 28 regarding BBC falsehoods about the Chinese detention of BBC journalist Ed Lawrence, who had interfered in a Shanghai protest.

Regarding the incident in which BBC’s Lawrence, whom BBC reported was arrested and beaten, Zhao explained to Agence France-Presse that the individual was among protesters blocking a crossroad, whom police asked to leave. The BBC reporter neither left, nor did he identify himself as a journalist until after he was detained, at which point he was allowed to go. “The BBC immediately twisted the story and massively propagated the narrative that its journalist had been ‘arrested’ and ‘beaten’ by police 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,” remarked Zhao.

Foreign journalists must not “engage in activities incompatible with their capacity as journalists,” Zhao continued. “Many foreign media organizations have a presence in China. How come the BBC is always involved in troubles at the scene?”

Nonetheless, the British Foreign Office (formerly the Foreign and Colonial Office) summoned Chinese Ambassador Zheng Zeguang to protest Lawrence’s detention.