China enforced a media blackout on the saga of the faked Olympic opening ceremony song on Wednesday and all references to the story were removed from Chinese Internet sites.
Beijing's Olympic organisers admitted on Tuesday that nine-year-old Lin Miaoke, who was seen by millions around the world singing during the ceremony, was actually miming a song that was pre-recorded by another girl.
The show's musical director revealed the real singer, seven-year-old Yang Peiyi who has uneven teeth and a chubby face, was replaced by government order because she did not present the right image of China.
No newspaper reported on the issue on Wednesday and state broadcasters also avoided the subject. References to the story were blocked or deleted from the Internet.
Olympic organisers on Wednesday defended the switching of the seven-year-old singer with a more photogenic double, comparing it with an athlete getting dropped for a big game.
Wang Wei, vice president of the Beijing Olympic organising committee also said he saw no problem with the secret move.
"I think it is a decision of the group of the directors, together... they are to achieve the most theatrical effect for the benefit of the whole performance, the whole opening ceremony," Wang told reporters.
"I do not see there is anything wrong with it," he said.
China's media is under the control of the central government which also tightly polices the Internet and often deletes or blocks access to items considered unflattering to the country's leaders or hostile to national interests.
The song saga may have embarrassed the nation's top leaders after the musical director Chen Qigang revealed that a member of communist party's ruling politburo was behind the decision to fake the performance.
He said in an interview with a state broadcaster that the actual singer of the song, Yang, was not considered attractive enough to appear on stage, so the cuter Lin was selected instead.
Photographs of Lin in a bright red party dress aparently singing the patriotic song "Ode to the Motherland" were published in newspapers and websites all over the world and the official China Daily hailed her as a rising star.
"The reason why little Yang was not chosen to appear was because we wanted to project the right image, we were thinking about what was best for the nation," Chen said in the interview that appeared briefly on the news website Sina.com before it was wiped from the Internet.
He said the final decision to stage the event with Lin lip-synching to another girl's voice was taken after the politburo member attended a rehearsal.
"He told us there was a problem that we needed to fix it, so we did," he said, without disclosing further details of the order.
China's ministry of industry and information technology, which is in charge of the Internet in China, declined to comment on the issue on Wednesday.
"We know nothing about this," said a ministry official, declining to give her name.
0 comments:
Post a Comment