{"id":2107,"date":"2008-01-12T15:54:33","date_gmt":"2008-01-12T20:54:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/01\/12\/in-china-citizen-journalism-gets-you-killed\/"},"modified":"2008-01-12T15:54:33","modified_gmt":"2008-01-12T20:54:33","slug":"in-china-citizen-journalism-gets-you-killed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/01\/12\/in-china-citizen-journalism-gets-you-killed\/","title":{"rendered":"In China, citizen journalism gets you killed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s romantic in a way, the image of &#8220;citizen journalists&#8221; with their trusty cellphones, capturing news events around the world and allowing everyone to see instant photos or videos. But it can also be very dangerous, as a story out of China shows. As <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2008\/WORLD\/asiapcf\/01\/11\/china.blogger\/index.html\">reported by CNN<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2008\/01\/11\/chinese-blogger-beaten-to-death-by-government-officials\/\">at TechCrunch<\/a>, a man who took pictures of a confrontation between townspeople and a company dumping waste was beaten to death by private security guards. <\/p>\n<p>Although many stories describe Wei Wenhua, 41, as &#8220;a blogger,&#8221; he <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asiamedia.ucla.edu\/article.asp?parentid=85251\">appears to have been<\/a> a construction company official who merely started to record the fracas on his cellphone. A group of more than 15 &#8220;chengguan,&#8221; or private security contractors &#8212; sometimes referred to as &#8220;city inspectors&#8221; &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iht.com\/articles\/ap\/2008\/01\/11\/news\/China-Protest-Death.php\">reportedly attacked him<\/a> and he was dead before he reached the hospital. In a press release, Reporters Without Borders <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rsf.org\/article.php3?id_article=24999\">calls<\/a> Wei the first citizen journalist to die in China.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s romantic in a way, the image of &#8220;citizen journalists&#8221; with their trusty cellphones, capturing news events around the world and allowing everyone to see instant photos or videos. But it can also be very dangerous, as a story out of China shows. As reported by CNN and at TechCrunch, a man who took pictures &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2008\/01\/12\/in-china-citizen-journalism-gets-you-killed\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;In China, citizen journalism gets you killed&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}