Chinese officials have sharply criticized foreign reporters over their coverage of the riots in Tibet, accusing them of biased reporting and preventing them from traveling to Tibet or neighboring provinces to report on the unrest.
The government has also begun a propaganda campaign aimed at persuading the public that the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, instigated the violence in Tibet on March 14 and that China was a victim of separatist terrorism.
The Tibetan government in exile said yesterday that the death toll from the demonstrations was about 140. Previously, it had said that 99 protesters had died. China has put the death toll at 22.
The Chinese government's effort is the clearest sign yet of its concern that the Tibet unrest, as well as anti-government protests over Darfur, could disrupt the Olympic Games this summer in Beijing.
Youtube.com was blocked after the riots began, and CNN and BBC broadcasts regularly go black after mention of riots in Tibet. The New York Times Web site appears to have been blocked or censored in recent days.
Over the weekend, the government allowed Chinese Web sites, which are usually heavily censored for political content, to post sharp critiques of foreign news media reports about Tibet and to show graphic, violent images of Tibetans looting and attacking ethnically Han Chinese in Lhasa on March 14.
The images have fueled outrage in China and led to a flurry of Web postings critical of Tibetans.
To appease foreign reporters, Beijing told several journalists on Monday that a group of about 12 journalists would be able to travel to Lhasa for a special government-guided tour of the city this week.
The government has issued no official statement criticizing the foreign news media. But in recent days state-controlled newspapers, TV stations and Internet sites have been carrying stories and commentary with a common theme: foreign media distortions. Xinhua news agency released a story over the weekend suggesting that film shown by CNN misrepresented the situation. CNN, in a statement, said its coverage was accurate.
"I used to think the Western media were fair," wrote one person online, according to China Daily. "But how could they turn a blind eye to the killing and arson by rioters?"
Gao Zhikai (高志凱), a former Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, said the foreign media were partly to blame and that many of the reports about Tibet had been biased.
"If you read the foreign media, the only message you can get is that China is very heavy-handed, and they are doing a lot of bad things in Tibet, and they are totally out of their minds," Gao said. "And they talk about the Dalai Lama as if he's God."
James Miles, a journalist with The Economist who was in Lhasa during the riots, was praised on Chinese television, though, after he reported in The Economist and gave an interview to CNN describing the riots and saying that Tibetans were singling out Han Chinese, burning their shops, throwing stones and assaulting them.
The point, some Chinese commentators said, was that the rioters were killing innocent Chinese rather than that the government was shooting protesters.
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