Want to become an overnight sensation and break the internet?
That’s so simple! All you have to do is land in a controversial kiss, raise your eyebrows and wink at a guy, or, this just in, roll your eyes at your fellow journalist at a press conference, right after the annual meeting of China's National People's Congress. But what’s so special about an eye-roll, you wonder?
Well, Liang Xiangyi, a journalist did a very obvious, and very dramatic, eye-roll filled with disgust, and turned her head away when her colleague Zhang Huijun of the American Multimedia Television (AMT) asked an incredibly long question, marked with praises for the government’s initiatives.
Wait! She did WHAAAAT?
Oh yes, and that too at a press conference, where the questions are pretty much predetermined and screened at ALL times. But little did this journalist know (at least at that point of time) that her reaction will soon go viral.
Watch the viral clip here:
Her expression became the talk of the social media in a span of few hours. People were divided between red and blue (since Zhang was wearing red and Liang was wearing blue). Memes, gifs, hashtags, parody videos, and even mobile covers, about the incident popped up all over the internet.
But when you are in China, there is a looming fear of you getting censored – even for your expression. Liang Xiangyi became one of the most searched names in the country (even more than the President), and she had to be stopped, right?
And that’s exactly what the Chinese government did.
BLOCK! BLOCK! & BLOCK!
Her personal Weibo page had been taken down, and even the search results for her name on the social media platform were censored. And if that wasn’t enough, she even lost her accreditation to cover the NPC. So is it bye bye to the freedom of press forever?
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