WATCH: China Censors CNN Live Feed During Report on Tennis Star Who Accused Government Official of Sexual Assault
China pulled CNN off the air Monday during its report on Peng Shuai — the tennis star who went missing after accusing a retired government official of sexual assault, then reemerged over the weekend in a series of photos posted by Chinese state media, and in a video call with the International Olympic Committee.
During the report on Monday’s edition of New Day, a live feed of CNN’s broadcast in China was shown in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. The feed appeared to be several seconds behind the U.S. broadcast, and so a CNN promo was seen as the New Day segment on Peng began. But suddenly, as soon as Peng was mentioned, the feed stopped transmitting the broadcast, and tone and bars appeared.
“No signal please stand by,” read the message on the screen.
Host Brianna Keilar introduced Taiwan-based correspondent Will Ripley for a live report on the latest developments on Peng — who has accused China’s former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of assaulting her. Then, co-host John Berman gave context to what was happening with the Chinese feed of the broadcast.
“Underneath your face,” Berman told Ripley, “[viewers] can see a box which is the actual live feed of this broadcast in China. But it’s all color bars. And it went to color bars the minute you started talking. So what’s going on here?”
“Chinese censors, John,” Ripley said. “I have lost count over the last eight years here in Asia covering China of how many times CNN’s coverage of controversial issues has been censored. It used to go to straight black. Now they’ve upgraded and they go to color bars. But nonetheless, it is a live, realtime example of the censorship that’s happening in the mainland.
“They scrubbed Peng Shuai from the internet. They’re certainly not talking about this on television. And even international networks. They have an army of censors waiting to push that button the minute we start talking about this story. But it is not making this story go away. The pressure is still mounting on Beijing from the outside, because of the efforts of journalists around the world, and also diplomats wanting Peng Shuai to be able to speak her truth.”
Watch above, via CNN.
