Journalists here are put into a bind by stories such as that yesterday about the various terror plots alleged by the authorities at the weekend.

While a few details leaked out from police about the “incident” on board an airliner from Urumqi to Beijing on Friday, they were hardly sufficient on their own to justify claims by politicians that it represented a clear attempt to hijack and crash the plane - a mass murder suicide attack, as it would have had to have been.

Actually, none of those details have leaked to me. It’s not impossible to find, I can Google the story, but I had CCTV9 on most of yesterday and this morning, and the only story was coverage of the Two Meetings, uh, meeting.

As for the claim, also by a politician, that a terrorist cell broken up by police in Urumqi in January was targeting the Olympics, no evidence at all was adduced to support this.
It seems only right to inject a certain amount of scepticism, but how much? Some will say that all claims about terrorism, from whichever government, have to be taken on trust, and there is no reason to doubt the word of the Chinese authorities more than anyone else: in western systems there is normally some exposure to the media at court cases, where evidence is publicly weighed - but can’t this be fixed?

And if you dismiss the claims out of hand, you look pretty stupid if conclusive evidence is brought forward later.

On the other hand, if you report the government claims as fact, you deny the very real suspicions which clearly many journalists and diplomats here - to say nothing of representatives of Uighur and other minority groups - genuinely feel.

One problem with media in China is when there is a distressing story, like the construction deaths at the Bird’s Nest, or this story of possible averted terrorism, the story changes a few times, and then disappears. Now, I believe a good retraction, but the second or third time the details change, I start to imagine thing much worse. Different reports say that there were various numbers of fatalities, 2 deaths at the Bird’s Nest (Shanghai Daily), or 6 (says the Washington Post) and USA Today says that China denies 10 deaths. These are serious newspapers, not rumors from some guy’s blog. And even if it is 10 fatalities, does “10 tragic accidents” look anywhere near as distressing as “People died but we’re not telling”?

In my opinion (Warning! This is now rumors from Some Guy’s Blog!), I think the Olympics will be completely safe. The Olympic fever here is so high, and there are so many changes to make the city more tourist-friendly and accessible, and Beijing already has a very low crime rate, but I have to wonder, if something awful did happen, would a warning get out in time?

Via Richard Spencer’s Telegraph Blog