Shame! Shame! Shame on China! The Portrait of a Spectator-Sparsely
Beijing Olympics -- Journalists pepper Olympic committee representatives
with questions on political rights

International Herald Tribune

Journalists pepper Olympic committee representatives with questions on
political rights

By Peter Berlin
Thursday, August 14, 2008

BEIJING: Every morning during the Olympics, the local organizing
committee and the International Olympic Committee face the world's news
media at a state-of-the-Games news conference. These things are rarely
entirely smooth sailing for the officials - after all, it is a rare
chance for journalists to show off their questioning chops to the cream
of their international competition.

But the conference Wednesday turned nasty in a quite unprecedented way,
as American and British journalists lobbed one explosive question after
another on human rights in China.