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Earthquake gives Beijing a wobblyPosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, July 4, 2006 7:06 PM
Today at lunchtime, an earthquake gave the office workers of Beijing a little wobble, although apparently nobody at ground level noticed the ground moving beneath their feet. A few hours later, Xinhua released this report -- the English and Chinese versions came out simultaneously:
An earthquake measuring 5.1 degrees on the Richter scale jolted a county in north China's Hebei Province at 11:56 a.m. (Beijing Time) Tuesday, according to the State Seismological Bureau (SSB). Coming a few days after the proposal of a an absurd law that could result in fines for news media that report "sudden" news items without approval (see Danwei story: Draft bill: Breaking news stories to be illegal), this earthquake provoked a storm of mobile phone text messages and MSN conversations amongst Chinese media circles. The Big One would hit Beijing at 2pm, said one rumor, later revised to 5 pm, and then 7 pm, as the rumored Big One stubbornly refused to arrive. Which made clear a point about the recent proposed law that threatens to fine news media for reporting 'unauthorized' stories about breaking events: The function of news media during a time of emergency is to gather as many facts as possible and present a version of the truth that is better researched than casual text messages. Any law that hinders the process of sorting the facts from the rumors is a bad law. The image reproduced above is taken from Xujin's blog post: it's a map made from Google Earth that shows the distance from Beijing to the earthquake's epicenter. Links and Sources
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