I can't remember the name of the BBC reporter right now who was there, but he maintained for years that he did not see a massacre in the square but a massive, occassionally rowdy and physical, protest. He only started changing his story to the accepted Western narrative of a massacre many years later when he became very much part of the BBC and British establishment.
(My tired insomnia-ridden brain wants to say it was an Attonbrough or Dimbleby, but I'm not sure that's right and you can't google anything mentioning TS without just getting fifty pages of recent propaganda articles from the Atlantic or whatever)
IMPORTANT EDIT: Yeah, I muddled some of the details (I really need a good night's sleep, this week's been awful for it) but I remembered and doubled checked online and with a friend who used to be a journo so here it is...
John Simpson is the veteran BBC journalist who was there with a camera and film crew. They shot a good deal of what went on to be in the BBC report edit that you see whenever it comes up (some is from AP and CBS I believe). And while he never denied there were deaths his reporting at the time was very different from the accepted story he tacitly supports or at least doesn't feel the need to correct now (10k killed, driven over by tanks etc).
The crowd was a very rough lot, not nice students, and they wanted blood. They smashed the head of one of the soldiers in, and then they started to smash another one in and I thought, ‘I can’t stand by and just let this happen,’ and so I waded in.
The numbers he gives have varied a bit over the years but even as recent as a couple of years ago on Twitter he said he estimated about 40 deaths that he saw or could tell from the aftermath. Even now he doesn't paint the picture that's constantly pushed by the West of an indiscriminate massacre of peaceful protestors and massive casualties, although definitely has a 'go along to get along' attitude towards not refuting or calling it out when he's been asked to talk about it, unlike when he was a younger man.
Interestingly, his original assessment seems to also be supported to this day by Jeff Widener, the photo journalist who took the Tank Man picture. He talks about the violence of the mob and barely escaping alive from them himself (to some quietly shocked CBS News anchors) in this modern interview piece. And as good sense and the latter part of the segment shows, he's not exactly pro-China back then or today.
What's striking to me is just the straightforward, uncontroversial relaying of the facts at the time, by the Western journalists there, compared to the absurd propaganda fantasies presented even by journalists now.
These two men aren't even particularly determined to correct the record, push back against the narrative, or give broader context. They're just defending the work they did and what they saw amongst the swirl of disinfo for the sake of their own reputations.
I can't remember the name of the BBC reporter right now who was there, but he maintained for years that he did not see a massacre in the square but a massive, occassionally rowdy and physical, protest. He only started changing his story to the accepted Western narrative of a massacre many years later when he became very much part of the BBC and British establishment.
(My tired insomnia-ridden brain wants to say it was an Attonbrough or Dimbleby, but I'm not sure that's right and you can't google anything mentioning TS without just getting fifty pages of recent propaganda articles from the Atlantic or whatever)
IMPORTANT EDIT: Yeah, I muddled some of the details (I really need a good night's sleep, this week's been awful for it) but I remembered and doubled checked online and with a friend who used to be a journo so here it is...
John Simpson is the veteran BBC journalist who was there with a camera and film crew. They shot a good deal of what went on to be in the BBC report edit that you see whenever it comes up (some is from AP and CBS I believe). And while he never denied there were deaths his reporting at the time was very different from the accepted story he tacitly supports or at least doesn't feel the need to correct now (10k killed, driven over by tanks etc).
In earlier talks and writing on it his focus used to be on a large protest that turned very ugly and violent due to a small number of student protestors attacking soldiers, using indiscriminate beatings, and throwing firebombs until finally Chinese soldiers responded and opened fire. As recently as 2013 he's talked about stepping in to try and stop the violent student protestors killing the injured soldiers they dragged from the famous burning armoured car.
The numbers he gives have varied a bit over the years but even as recent as a couple of years ago on Twitter he said he estimated about 40 deaths that he saw or could tell from the aftermath. Even now he doesn't paint the picture that's constantly pushed by the West of an indiscriminate massacre of peaceful protestors and massive casualties, although definitely has a 'go along to get along' attitude towards not refuting or calling it out when he's been asked to talk about it, unlike when he was a younger man.
Interestingly, his original assessment seems to also be supported to this day by Jeff Widener, the photo journalist who took the Tank Man picture. He talks about the violence of the mob and barely escaping alive from them himself (to some quietly shocked CBS News anchors) in this modern interview piece. And as good sense and the latter part of the segment shows, he's not exactly pro-China back then or today.
What's striking to me is just the straightforward, uncontroversial relaying of the facts at the time, by the Western journalists there, compared to the absurd propaganda fantasies presented even by journalists now.
These two men aren't even particularly determined to correct the record, push back against the narrative, or give broader context. They're just defending the work they did and what they saw amongst the swirl of disinfo for the sake of their own reputations.