Yes, the pollution is sh*t. Yes, we've had a rough couple of weeks, including our current foray into the second ever red alert. But the sheer audacity of the international media and their lies is baffling, nonetheless.

Last year, the media abroad, particularly The Daily Mail, ran a story about an LED banner displaying a sunrise on Tian'anmen Square. The media claimed this was the government giving Beijing-residents a fake sunrise during a time when AQI levels were so high that the sun was hidden from view.

It turned out in the end that this was merely a travel advertisement, and that the journalists had not done their research, as debunked by Tech in Asia.

During the last airpocalypse, there were also a fair amount of bogus and simply sensationalist stories doing the rounds while we were smothered in grey.

First, the story of air being bought and sold in bottles resurfaced. Various media outlets including Vice and the Telegraph ran that story this time around. Vice's was titled "Beijing's Air Is So Bad, the Sale of Bottled Canadian Mountain Air Is Soaring". Realistically though, the average Beijinger, both foreign and local, does not buy air in bottles. We tend to buy air purifiers and air masks.

Then, we have the Independent, which reported that a Beijing restaurant was now charging for air purifiers. Upon reading the article, it turns out that the restaurant in question is located in Jiangsu province: really, really far from Beijing.

"The pollution in China is so bad, a restaurant started putting a surcharge on top of customers’ food bills as an “air cleaning fee.'

A restaurant in Zhangjiagang city, in the Jiangsu Province , recently purchased 'air filtration machines' following reports of dangerously high pollution levels in the country."

No F&B establishment in Beijing has been known to charge for their air purifiers, in fact, most local restaurants are not even equipped as the technology is expensive.

There was also our own debunking of The Economist's regurgitation of Berkeley Earth's misinformed conclusion that a day breathing in Beijing is equivalent to smoking 40 cigarettes. Well, you can read how that went here.

None of this mentions that other international cities, namely New Delhi, consistently experience worse air pollution than Beijing, and yet receive only a fraction of the coverage. Don't these news outlets have bureaus in New Delhi? Do their correspondents not look out the window or walk outside?

There'll undoubtedly be a huge outpouring of other poorly-researched articles with this current round of pollution. All we can ask and hope is that the international media starts reporting the facts a little more responsibly.

More stories by this author here.

Email: margauxschreurs@truerun.com

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