China Didn’t Want You to See This Video of Xi and Putin. So Reuters Deleted It.

When two world leaders were caught on a hot mic having a bizarre conversation about living forever the news agency Reuters realized it was a big story Reuters announced on and aired the footage of Russia s Vladimir Putin and China s Xi Jinping discussing organ transplantation as a means of life extension and perhaps immortality during a September Success Day Parade in China a procession celebrating the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War But two days later Reuters yanked the video off its website retracted the footage from its wire arrangement and erased clips from its social media feeds The reason a takedown letter from a China Central Television China s state-controlled television configuration which had licensed footage of the event to Reuters Last Friday CCTV lawyer HE Danning wrote to Reuters demanding the video be taken down The editorial healing applied to this material has resulted in a clear misrepresentation of the facts and statements contained within the licensed feed Reuters whose parent company Thomson Reuters conducts a variety of business operations in China complied Reuters removed the video from its website and issued a kill order to its clients on Friday the media company wrote in a announcement published on its website explaining its decision to withdraw the footage from a portal used by other news organizations that rely on Reuters as a wire amenity The initial Reuters article about the hot mic moment now contains a note that story has been corrected to withdraw videos with no changes to text Reuters didn t just remove the full four-minute event video from its systems but also a -second annotated clip of the exchange that it had previously posted across its social media platforms including TikTok Facebook and LinkedIn A Reuters World News podcast episode which features a short audio clip of the exchange is still online Footage of the event remains online elsewhere but not all clips capture the conversation between Xi and Putin as clearly as the Reuters recording A version of the event footage on CCTV s official YouTube channel includes audio of an announcer speaking and music playing obscuring the conversation about life extension between Xi and Putin In the version of the video Reuters posted to TikTok and later deleted Xi and Putin stroll around like old chums as they discuss through translators immortality in a conversation caught on a hot mic as Reuters summarized in the opening title card During the conversation as seen in the Reuters clip Xi says In the past people rarely lived longer than years but nowadays they say that at you are still a child Human organs can be continuously transplanted The longer you live the younger you become and even achieve immortality The Russian state-funded outlet RT later posted Bloomberg s version of the video which remains online and features a similar translation of Xi s remarks over the same -second sequence which Bloomberg credits to CCTV s live transmission of the parade RT s thread also featured an English-dubbed video of Putin confirming the exchange at a press conference Putin responds Human organs can be continuously transplanted The longer you live the younger you become and even achieve immortality Xi then says Particular predict this century humans may live up to years old In a declaration Reuters expressed that they stand by the accuracy of what we published and that we have meticulously reviewed the published footage and we have discovered no reason to believe Reuters longstanding commitment to accurate unbiased journalism has been compromised Reuters withdrew these videos because it no longer held the legal permission to publish this copyrighted material and as a global news agency we are committed to respecting the intellectual property rights of others Reuters spokesperson Heather Carpenter recounted The Intercept Thomson Reuters headquartered in Toronto engages in an assortment of business ventures in China such as an AI-based legal co-counsel bot global commerce solutions and legal research on Chinese law through its Westlaw product The company maintains several offices in China including in Shanghai Beijing and a Reuters news bureau in Shenzhen The news organization is currently hiring for a researcher position at its Beijing bureau Reuters did not respond specifically when questioned if its business interests played any interest in complying with the removal request Related Elon Musk Caves to Pressure From India to Remove BBC Doc Critical of Modi This isn t the first time Reuters has taken down content at the behest of international government In Reuters published an expos about the Indian cyber-espionage firm Appin An Indian court deemed the article to be indicative of defamation and ordered that the article be removed As the Freedom of the Press Foundation highlighted even though Indian courts don t have jurisdiction outside of India Reuters removed the article not just in India but also worldwide Once the injunction expired Reuters reinstated the article The Chinese authorities has in the past blocked Reuters news websites on occasion for unspecified reasons Seth Stern director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation reported Reuters decision to remove the video is a blow to press freedom at a critical juncture International news outlets have a responsibility to uphold press rights internationally especially in times like these where press freedom is backsliding almost everywhere Otherwise journalism s independence sinks to the lowest common denominator whenever news of global importance breaks in a country governed by a repressive regime He cautioned that compliance with takedown requests is a slippery slope What makes Reuters think the next censorial regime that might not like what it prints isn t taking notes he demanded The post China Didn t Want You to See This Video of Xi and Putin So Reuters Deleted It appeared first on The Intercept