Spot the differences with Yangzhou Evening News and CCTV!

On the left, you have an image submitted by the Yangzhou Evening News to the 17th Annual Chinese Journalism Awards, for which it won a Class I award in the Best News of Jiangsu province, as well as a Class III photojournalism award in the national round. Lots of inspiring pictures and smart captions that would befit any award-winning page (see details of pictures here on ESWN). Some smart chap then decided to do some sleuthing, and went to hunt for the physical printed copy of Page A5 of the October 16, 2006 issue of Yangzhou Evening News, and what he found was the page on the right. Yep, that's right, the page sent in by the editor had been FAKED. And while we're wondering what sort of rigorous checks the Chinese Journalism Awards has in place, the next one takes the cake!

This documentary programme entitled "The Secrets of the Direct Sales Industry Exposed" shown on CCTV12 recently did an exposé on the sad lives of three young women involved in direct sales, one of whom eventually committed suicide by jumping out of a speeding train to avoid going home with her parents. Typical sad, sob story you find on CCTV. The programme showed the above three photographs of the poor girl, her image blurred to protect her identity [h/t ESWN]. Well, one viewer found the pictures looking very familiar and also went on to do some sleuthing...

These were the pictures that he found, and they are the pictures of model and celebrity Yang Bingyang (杨冰阳), better known as Ayawawa. Obviously, Yang is not amused, but in her latest blog entry has said that she has no intention whatsoever of taking legal action against CCTV. At the end of the day though, the number of journalists in China who think they can get away with plagiarism and fake news in this day and age is simply astounding!