Beijing Censors Press Coverage of Olympic Murder?

From Times Online:

Olympic chiefs today said they were investigating reports that Beijing officials confiscated the notebooks and tape recorders of Chinese journalists covering the Games.

A witness at a press conference involving the US men’s volleyball team yesterday claimed local reporters were accosted after frank interviews with some of the players about the murder of Todd Bachman.

The 62-year-old American, who was stabbed by a Chinese man while sightseeing in Beijing on Saturday, was the father-in-law of Hugh McCutcheon, the US team coach.

The Beijing Olympic staff claimed they wanted to know what was said because they had not properly understood the discussion in English, despite the presence of official interpreters. But the Chinese journalists did not later recover their notes or tapes, according to the observer.

The incident raises concerns that the Chinese authorities are trying to erase the Olympics link to the murder of an American citizen in order to limit damage to the image of their games.

...[T]he International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) accused the Chinese authorities of “snooping” after it received reports of security officials shadowing the media on assignments in Beijing.

On Saturday, as journalists covered the scene of Mr Bachman’s murder and the subsequent suicide of his Chinese attacker at the Drum Tower, a tourist spot near the Forbidden City, their notes were photographed by unidentified strangers.

In a separate incident, a foreign journalist told the IFJ he had been stopped by two men with no press accreditation who took pictures of him and his notes after he had interviewed a French athlete at the airport.

Similarly, journalists interviewing a discontented landowner in Tiananmen Square were photographed by strangers who refused to identify themselves.

The attacks on Mr. and Mrs. Bachman by Tang Yongming were horrific.

The truth of what happened cannot be altered, nor can the murder's connection to the U.S. Olympic team.

Censorship may sidetrack the truth, but such detours don't change reality.