This is NPR's on the media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. This week, the Chinese government launched a media campaign against the banned Falun Gong movement.

The most powerful weapon in its arsenal is a video of five people who set themselves ablaze last week in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

The centerpiece of the footage is the charred face of a 12-year-old girl.

The Chinese government news agency reported that her mother, a follower of Falun Gong,

told the girl she would go to paradise in a twinkling if she died in the blaze.

A Falun Gong spokeswoman in the United States said there was no evidence that the people in

the square were members of the movement and called for an investigation. Eric Ekholm covers China for the

New York Times and he joins us on the line from Beijing. Mr. Ekholm, is there any evidence for the

claims of the government news agency? Well, one can never be sure. In terms of the identity of the

people, the government has put out considerable biographical detail about who they are, where they're

from, what schools they were at, and people at those schools have confirmed. So I think largely

the story is as described. Last week, the government confiscated CNN's tapes of the self-immolation in the square.

Now it's running its own video.

How do you account for the timing?

The tradition here has been to not report bad news to the public or things that make the party look bad.

Now, in this case, just coincidentally, many journalists were thinking Falun Gong may try to do something.

It was the beginning of the Chinese New Year, so it was just by coincidence that the CNN crew happened to be there.

I think because the police knew that Westerners had seen what happened, that night the government put out a press release in English

and sent out in its international news services

a short note saying five members have fallen gone, one man and four women tried to burn themselves,

one woman has died, they were from the city of Kaifeng, and no more detail. But they made no

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