Earlier this morning, I stumbled across this story and decided that although 60 children falling ill is important, I did not consider it worth sharing as it was not part of any real pattern or trend that I could see. After all, pesticide poisonings are fairly common in China, and deliberate pesticide patterns tragically so. (i.e. if someone wishes I could give a quick aside on suicide patterns in China, save that they are extremely high with suicides by young rural women using pesticides as the instrument of self-harm being the most common. Unlike most countries, rates of successful suicide among women in China occur at a higher rate than among men. Part of this is due to the frequency with which pesticides are used as the instrument of self-harm.)
However, I've also mentioned that I became interested in this field because I was hired by a trade magazine that dealt with water. I also mentioned that I left that magazine because the workers were more interested in playing strange office games and engaging in work sabotage than in getting interesting work done and that they lacked an international perspective (as well as many other desirable traits). Heck, they had trouble using the metric system. --not to mention the odd forced bowling that they would make employees engage in. (Heck, basically the place was one of two things: Either a stepping stone to something better or a dumping ground for people who lack talent.)
Therefore it was with interest that I discovered that after a glut of news in a nation that has a huge amount of fascinating water news, and their consistently ignoring such news, for some odd reason they chose this piece to share with the world as if it were the most important piece of news to occur in China in ages. (???) So. if they've chosen to share this story, I'm just petty enough to dissect what they did.
Here's what they wrote:
"BEIJING — More than 60 primary schoolchildren in southern China fell ill after drinking publicly supplied water that may have been deliberately poisoned, according to a July 1 report from the Chinese government news agency Xinhau.
The water in the school’s storage tank smelled of pesticide, and police found an empty bottle that they said may have contained the poison, Xinhua said.
Thirty-four were hospitalized, suffering from headaches and nausea. The others were under observation at their rural school in Guangxi province, the report said.
The county health department drained the water and disinfected the area.
The investigation is continuing. Meanwhile, the county education department is being accused of mismanagement, the report said."
For starters, they not only misspelled "Xinhua" but they did not even mis-spell it consistently. Secondly "Guangxi" is not technically a province. See, Facts and map about Guangxi Zhuang Nor did they even try to explain where it is located or teach anything about it.
So let's look at the actual Xinhua report:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-07/01/content_8471568.htm
Police suspect deliberate poisoning of S China schoolchildren
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-01 22:42:55 Print
GUILIN, Guangxi, July 1 (Xinhua) -- More than 60 children fell sick after drinking water that is suspected of beinge deliberately poisoned at a primary school in southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Tuesday.
Thirty-four of the children were still being treated at the People's Hospital of Guanyang County, where the incident happened, and their parents had arrived to take care of them, said Zou Xin, vice head of the county government.
The rest were under observation at school, said Zou.
The children, all from the boarding school at Dengjia Village, of Xinjie Town, suffered stomachaches, headaches and nausea after drinking the water provided by a public water supplier at the school dining room in the morning.
"It is a surprise. It happened before class. Luckily, some of the children in the school just didn't drink the water," said a teacher, who declined to give his name.
Police found the water of the school's storage tank smelled of pesticide and had an ivory-white substance floating in it. An empty Coke bottle, which is suspected of containing the poison, was found by the tank.
An investigation into the incident is underway. The county education department has accused the school of mismanagement.
The county health department staff had the water discharged and the pool disinfected later in the day and the water supply has resumed.
Editor: Yan Liang"
Now looking more closely, you will see that the article from this water magazine contains several errors. (I said these people were stupid. It seems they cannot even copy correctly.)
1. I already mentioned that they mistated Guangxi as being a province when the article clearly labels it as "Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region."
2. They neglect to mention when the event happened, a full week ago. This is one of the basic 5 Ws of journalism.
3. Is "publicly supplied water" the same as "water supplied by a public supplier"?
4. They give the dateline as Beijing when the dateline is Guilin. They are not very close to each other.
5.They say the area was disinfected while the story says the water tank was disinfected.
6. They wrote the County Education Department has been accused of mismanagement. In fact, the story says that the County Education Department has accused the school of mismanagement.
7. Note that Xinhua is described as the "Chinese government news agency." This is more or less correct, however, these people never made any attempt to verify or check the government source with other news sources. I worked with these folks and they always seemed to find the notion of a state-controlled press to be an insurmountable obstacle, and therefore tend to neglect covering China.
For those interested, here's the Reuters story. You will note that they tie the story in with fears of unsafe toys and food coming out of China. Personally, I find the connection far fetched, to say the least.
http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USPEK326469
Children ill after water poisoned in China school
Tue Jul 1, 2008 1:47pm EDT
BEIJING, July 1 (Reuters) - More than 60 children fell ill after drinking water that may have been deliberately poisoned at a primary school in southern China, state media reported on Tuesday.
Thirty-four were still in hospital, suffering from headaches and nausea, and the rest were under observation at their rural school in Guangxi province after drinking the water in their school canteen, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
The water in the school's storage tank smelled of pesticide and police found an empty bottle that they suspected of containing the poison, Xinhua said.
While the investigation is continuing, local education officials have already accused the school of mismanagement, it added.
Scandals involving substandard food or medicines are reported regularly by Chinese media and schools have been involved before.
A primary school headmistress was jailed last year for taking kickbacks from an unlicensed food company that indirectly led to nearly 200 children falling ill. In a separate case last year, a college student was arrested on suspicion of poisoning his classmates' water.
Food and drug safety in China has grabbed global attention over the past year after its products sparked scares abroad, from substandard pet feed in the United States to allegedly tainted dumplings in Japan. (Reporting by Simon Rabinovitch; editing by Dominic Evans)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment