Journalists group calls China’s handling of games ‘contrary to the Olympic spirit’

An organization representing foreign correspondents is criticizing China for how they were treated while covering the Olympic games in Beijing. 

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) said in a statement said it was “dismayed” at the way accredited foreign media was treated by security officials during the games, The Guardian reported, calling the way the Chinese government interacted with the press “contrary to the Olympic spirit.”

“Government interference occurred regularly during the Games,” the club wrote, saying several journalists fell victim to online harassment and targeting as part of state-backed online harassment and propaganda campaigns.

“After an Olympic ski event, a foreign reporter was prevented by a Beijing Olympic official from interviewing a Hong Kong athlete in the Games’ mixed zone, a space supposedly governed by international Olympic rules,” the statement read. “Most visibly, a reporter with the Dutch national broadcaster NOS was hauled off camera during a live TV broadcast by plainclothes security men, despite the fact that he had been standing in a spot police directed him to only minutes earlier.”

China faced intense scrutiny during the games based on allegations of human rights abuses and tensions with western nations. 

“The FCCC urges the Chinese authorities to uphold their own stated rules on accredited foreign press in China: namely, to allow journalists to book and conduct their own interviews without threat of state interference and to report freely in public areas,” the FCC said in its statement. “Unfortunately, neither rule was enforced at a time when global attention was trained on China more than ever.”