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The Tiananmen Square Confrontation
Rewriting History for a new Generation

For a short period, the media downgraded the 1989 student protests in Beijing from The Tiananmen Square Massacre to The Beijing Incident.
The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) caused casualties to civilians in the side streets of Beijing when the army fought its way past barricades to arrive at Tiananmen Square. In the resistance to martial law, many PLA soldiers were also killed. Nevertheless, final examination of eye witness and video reports prove that no students were actually killed in Tiananmen Square. Despite this knowledge, media have once again started to impart conspiracy and horror to the PLA entry into Tiananmen Square and characterize it as a massacre of students.
This falsification of history, which appears deliberate since the facts have become well known, deludes a new generation and prejudices it against China. The distortion of the happenings within Tiananmen Square reduces the media's credibility and leaves its open to charges of possibly misrepresenting significant current events.
Media Falsehoods
The media quickly sensationalized the 1989 confrontation between students massed in Tiananmen Square and the PLA. The truth of what happened became known after reports from reliable primary sources replaced the less reliable reports from secondary sources. The first hand accounts described a confrontation that came close to a battle but was peacefully settled. Students left the square without fatalities.
The original thesis--that the PLA massacred the students in Tiananmen Square--is being repeated. A few examples of the deliberate manner in which media are once again subtly distorting the1989 events at Tiananmen Square demonstrate media attempts at thought manipulation.
As the first example of exaggeration, the Columbia Journalism Review quoted Tim Russert of NBC's Meet the Press program of May 31, 1998:
"......