A campaign by the state-run China Central Television to smear Apple as bad for consumers, has instead backfired on the network, damaging their credibility. It seems a local celebrity included just a little too much information when posting his “outrage” as a PO’ed Apple fan.
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal “China Real Time Report” blog, the Communist Party’s CCTV initially aired a “Consumer Rights Day” broadcast on March 15th that celebrated consumer power, complete with song and dance routines.
The broadcast also included accusations that Apple was “biased against Chinese consumers in its warranty and customer service policies.” The report also implicated that Volkswagen was selling defective cars in China.
A message posted to the Sina Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) account of Taiwanese-American actor Peter Ho stated, along with the hash tag “#315 on the move” (referencing the broadcast):
“Cannot believe Apple is playing so many dirty tricks in customer service. As an Apple fan, I feel hurt. Won’t you [Apple] feel ashamed in front of Steve Jobs? Won’t you feel ashamed in front of those young people who sell their kidneys for your products? You dare to bully consumers simply because you are a famous brand. Need to send out at about 8:20 pm.”
Ho’s post was one of a series of negative messages posted at 8:20PM by several Weibo celebs. Interestingly enough, all of the promnent 8:20 posts were posted from Apple devices!
The posts caused observers to speculate that Ho and the other celebrities had been supplied with talking points, and were possibly paid to post the anti-Apple comments as part of a sponsored effort to spread CCTV’s propaganda via social networks.
Ho later made the familiar claim that his account had been hacked, and denied making the post. He then deleted his posts from the service.
A flurry of critical posts followed, using the hashtag #PostAround820, until the service began censoring posts using that tag.
“I’ve heard that CCTV asked several Weibo celebrities to post negative things about Apple around 8:20,” one user posted, “As a result, Mr. Liu, Zheng Yuanjie, and their compatriots were outed by Peter Ho’s post at 8:20, so now Peter Ho is pretending his phone was stolen and someone posted on his Weibo, and deleting comments on his Weibo as fast as lightning. Tens of thousands of comments have been trimmed down to a couple thousand.”
“Would the all-powerful CCTV please tell us which brands haven’t discriminated against the people of this Heavenly Kingdom? Post around 8:20,” another user facetiously added.
The Wall Street Journal noted that “the reaction on Weibo points to rising mistrust of the country’s state-run media outlets among Chinese Internet users, who have increasing access to alternate sources of information via social media.”
CCTV has been criticized in the past for offering thinly veiled propaganda as news. In one such instance, the network’s news program profiled the Chinese-built Chengdu J-10, depicting it targeting and destroying another plane with a missile.
It was later revealed that the entire video sequence was footage taken from the 1986 move “Top Gun.”
