Exposing a CCTV Fabricated News Program

A retired engineer in our factory named Gao who is around 60 years old, used to have a spinal disease, which made him hunchbacked. In 1998, he practiced Falun Gong and gradually recovered his health. His back was straightened out in the process. This is an event that his family and many employees in the factory had witnessed.

One day at the end of July of 1999, the CCTV noon news program broadcast that Gao accepted the station's interview. According to the report, Gao stated that he had never had a hunchback, and that his illnesses being healed through practicing Falun Gong had never happened. At the time, my colleagues and I were quite puzzled.

Later, I contacted many people privately. It turned out that to film the interview, the CCTV personnel collaborated with the directors in my factory. Prior to the interview, they had called Gao to the factory's workers union office and gave him "ideological education." They told him to cooperate, repeat what they had presented to the TV audience, and assist them to "expose and criticise" Falun Gong. Gao didn't want to lie to the TV audience and refused to do that. Seeing that they couldn't get what they wanted, they locked him up in a small room in the workers union office for a whole day. Then they pressured and threatened him, and didn't allow him to go home unless he cooperated. Faced with such pressure, Gao relented.

The people from CCTV scripted out everything: how and what to say and how to act. Then he sat in front of the video camera. An interviewer asked, "It is said that you had a spinal problem and had a hunchback. You were healed through practicing Falun Gong. Is it true?" When he heard this, he immediately showed anger, leaped up, bent his body 90 degrees, showed his straight back to the camera and shouted, "Do I look like I ever had a hunchback?" With this footage, they concluded, "Stories of Falun Gong healing illnesses cannot pass verification and are all fake." The interview was set up like this and deceived many people watching and who didn't know the truth.

A few years have since passed. Very few people know the truth behind this. CCTV currently has a program entitled "News Investigation" with the by-line, "What you see is what you cannot imagine." I think this sentence is very fitting for what they have done in fabricating stories to discredit and demonise Falun Gong.