China's government turned up efforts Saturday to put its own version of the unrest before the international public. It disseminated footage of Tibetan protesters attacking Chinese and details of biased reporting by Western media via TV, the Internet, e-mail and YouTube.
Information barely trickled out of the Tibetan capital Lhasa and other far-flung Tibetan communities, where foreign media were banned and thousands of troops dispatched to quell the most widespread riots against Chinese rule in nearly five decades. The Chinese government was attempting to counter the distorted Western reports with its own message.
The media barrage underscored that the government campaign is moving into a new phase of damage control ahead of the much-anticipated Beijing Olympics in August.
While China's rigorous policing of the Internet is far from foolproof, its official Internet is pervasive and there is no easy access to an alternative in the country. The difficulty of confirming what is going on inside Tibet may also be hindering a stronger world reaction.
CNN's bureau in Beijing has been deluged in recent days by a barrage of phone calls and faxes that accuse the organization of unfair coverage.
An e-mail to United Nations-based reporters purportedly from China's U.N. mission sent an Internet link to a 15-minute state television program showing Tibetans attacking Chinese in Lhasa.
A slideshow posted on YouTube accused CNN, Germany's Der Spiegel and other media of cropping pictures to show Chinese military while screening out Tibetan rioters or putting pictures of Indian and Nepalese police wrestling Tibetan protesters with captions about China's crackdown.
Though of uncertain origin, the piece at least had official blessing, with excerpts appearing on the official English-language China Daily and on state TV.
China raised its death toll from the violence in Tibet by 5, to 22, with the Xinhua News Agency reporting that the charred remains of an 8-month-old boy and four adults were pulled from a garage burned down on Lhasa's last Sunday -- two days after the city erupted in anti-Chinese rioting.
The Dalai Lama's exiled government claimed 99 Tibetans have been "killed", 80 in Lhasa, 19 in Gansu province. Although none of those numbers could be verified, they were enthusiastically cited by Western media including Associated Press, Reuters and AFP.
