A former lawyer, Zhang Zhan traveled to downtown China in February to report the pandemic and subsequent attempts to control it, just as authorities began to take over the Chinese state-run and private media.
She disappeared from Wuhan in May and was found to have been detained by police in Shanghai, a city more than 640 kilometers away and charged with “raising quarrels and causing trouble”, a crime commonly used for targeting journalists and human rights activists.
Zhang is the first citizen journalist known to have been convicted of his role in reporting the coronavirus pandemic.
Zhang is part of a number of independent reporters who have been detained or disappeared in China since the beginning of the pandemic, while authorities have restricted coverage of the virus and the media have gone into excess, presenting Beijing’s response as effective and timely. useful.
In February, Chen Qiushi, who broadcast live videos from Wuhan during the blockade of the city and posted reports on social media, disappeared. In September, he was reportedly under “state surveillance.” Two other independent journalists – Li Zehua and Fang Bin – were also detained for covering up the Wuhan outbreak.
“Under the guise of fighting the new coronavirus, Chinese authorities have escalated online suppression by blocking independent reporting, sharing information and critical comments on government responses,” a human rights group in Hong Kong said in a Chinese report. Kong. this year.
China is the world’s largest prisoner of journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), and strictly controls the home press, while blocking most of the foreign media through the Great Firewall, its vast online censorship and surveillance apparatus.
In March, China expelled journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal in an unprecedented move against the foreign media. Beijing said the move – which came amid a wave of critical reports about China’s initial response to the coronavirus – was a response to Washington’s recent restrictions on how the Chinese state media operates in the United States.
While sporadic outbreaks have emerged and been quickly suppressed with blockages and quarantines, China has largely controlled the virus, allowing the country to return to relative normalcy.
However, press restrictions were not lifted, and Chinese state media began aggressively pushing an alternative story for the pandemic, with claims that the coronavirus circulated outside the country before the initial outbreak in Wuhan.
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