Has Mail Online discovered irony or was it just a cock-up?

Perhaps the successful Mail Online should stick to celebrity gossip as its foray into serious issues seems prone to schlock.

While lacking the pithy wit of a News of the World headline, the Mail Online’s recent article on China’s alleged mistreatment of Falun Gong certainly pulled few punches with its title:

“Thousands of religious prisoners in China had their livers, kidneys and corneas ripped out while they were ALIVE to sell to ‘transplant tourists’, claims new film”

//www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3257383/Thousands-religious-prisoners-China-livers-kidneys-corneas-ripped-ALIVE-sell-transplant-tourists-claims-new-film.html#ixzz3nUwZKrMT

On first reading, the article seemed be a one-side puff piece promoting and anti-Chinese film with its “most compelling testimony” coming from a doctor, who just happens to be a Uyghur. Was there no balance to be had? Are the Chinese authorities that evil and when is the computer game out?

But “STOP THE PRESS!”

….the article does have balance, although you have to be able to read Chinese to get it.

In one of its pictures (below) the articles shows the groundswell of support for Falun Gung in Hong Kong from some clearly hardened radicals – well mainly little old ladies. Read what is actually written on the banners however and you’ll see that they are saying quite the opposite to what the Mail Online’s caption purports. Far from them “appealing for recognition for the Falun Gong’s plight” as claimed by the article, the banners are actually urging people to distance themselves from the evil religion of Fallun Gong (the black script) with the scripts in red making various complaints against the sect including accusing it of attacking China and attempting to de-stabilise Hong Kong by aligning it with foreign powers.

It’s okay, Gwailo’s can’t read chinese!

Somehow, I don’t see the Mail Online as being big on irony so either this was a simple cock-up by the picture editor who can’t read Chinese and the editor who didn’t think to check ( – come on Chinese is not exactly a minority language) or was selected by someone who knew exactly what is being said on the banners in the picture and maybe disagreed with the political narrative of the article.

Either way it’s all rather reminiscent of when the media was showing us fake pictures of Russian tanks supposedly invading Ukraine when in fact they were stock photos taken in Chechnya a few years before.

Well done guys, best stick to articles about the size of Kardashian’s booty.

Making the evidence fit the narrative