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China Announces Launch-Success Details — Before Launch
Ironsides writes "After faking the fireworks at the Olympics this year, one would have thought China had learned their lesson. Now, it appears they announced the success of their manned space mission before liftoff even occured, complete with dialogue."
It isn't that uncommon for Press Releases announcing the success of an event to be drafted before the event takes place.
Sure, fabricating the actual dialogue ahead of time is shadier than most.. but really what they're doing isn't THAT different from what we do in America every day. It's only garnering attention because it was leaked, but I can't imagine that anyone who says they're shocked by this isn't feigning that shock.
You could just as easily be just as shocked at a Presidential candidate accidentally releasing both a victory speech and a concession speech before knowing the outcome of an election. It's not really news, it's just humorous that it was posted (way) too prematurely.
How many people are honestly surprised at this?
There are already news articles written for when Obama is elected president. The same news organizations also have articles written for when McCain is elected president. The do this, so once elections are over, they will be the first to post an article about it. It takes time to write and edit, so time is saved by doing everything before hand.
China wrote this article before the launch, so it could get it out as soon as success was confirmed, with little to no editing. Upon failure, articles such as this are suppose to be thrown out. This one never made it that far.
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Actually, newspapers print extracts from speeches politicians haven't yet given all the time - because they're scripted days in advance and, these days, intentionally provided to the press.
If you look at the 'dialog' in the story it's really nothing of the sort. It's canned phrases. Just like, as someone already noted, "One small step..." So there's obviously some phrases that it is known will be used during a successful launch, so the journalist can take a short cut in writing a story about it...
All major news outlets have pre-written obituaries for just about every major celebrity who's vaguely within range of snuffing it. Every few months there's a 'controversy' when one of 'em gets mistakenly published. I don't really see any difference to that...
That nation's government is nothing but a lie machine.
Yes, and the obituary of every major public figure has already been written as well. Such prep pieces are responsible practice for newspapers that have to be ready on-the-spot.
This wasn't one of those pieces. This was an entire narrative complete with faked dialogue
Yes, it was one of those pieces. You'll find that lots of news agencies have prep obituaries with "faked" messages of condolences. It helps to structure the article if there's dummy content in there. They are removed and replaced with the real messages once the real condolence messages are made.
The same happened here. The "faked" dialogue was nothing more than dummy text.
Such conversations are often scripted. Armstrong's "one small step", for instance, was scripted before they ever left Earth.
"After faking their fireworks?"
Please.
All the fireworks were real. The thing you're referring to is a sequence of fireworks that wasn't filmed for television and was replaced by CGI.
The reason that the sequence - a series of giant "footsteps" across parts of Beijing - was not filmed was that it was deemed too dangerous to follow the fireworks with a helicopter and camera.
The fireworks, of course, actually happened, and the stadium coverage of the fireworks were all real. Get your facts straight.
I love America and all, but if you think we haven't as a nation committed genocide then you've not read back far enough in our history.
From death marches to reservations thousands of miles away from their homelands to intentionally trading them blankets from smallpox and tuberculosis patients, the Indians have quite a moral claim against the US government. Most of them now have either mainstreamed themselves into our society or seem fairly content with schools, casinos, a distinct lack of sales taxes, and being largely left the hell alone. I'd say they handled it far more graciously than the rest of us in the U.S. have.
You do realize that fireworks are real and flying people aren't, right? There's a difference in faking one over the other because of that fact.
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Why are you so quick to jump to defend the practice of pulling the wool over the public's eyes with scripted, PR spin of a historical event? Is this something you support the media doing (state-run or not)? Would Apollo 11 have been better if NASA had actually recorded the conversations with Neil Armstrong on a sound-stage?
Media has moved on in the last 40-ish years. Prepping a press release is nothing new (as many have commented). I suppose you think Armstrong just stepped down off that ladder and suddenly was inspired to speak those words without any preparation or oversight from a "media communications manager"?
If USA's [alleged! lol] moon landing was happening now you could be sure that NASA would have press releases with picture from inside the orbiter (taken pre-flight) and the quote of the first words from the moon pre-layed up and ready for near-simultaneous release with the LM landing.
From the article (which is quite poetic), the "dummy quotes" are all things that they will say (assuming they're not all killed before they get chance).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_re_as/as_china_space_article_1:
'One minute to go!'
'Changjiang No.1 found the target!'...
'The air pressure in the cabin is normal!'
That guy that says "One minute", well every trial run that's what he said, it's part of the mission. The guy that says "Changjiang 1 on target", you guessed it, he says that so everyone knows it's on target. Air pressure, ..., someone checks it every few minutes and announces the results occasionally.
The only bit in the article that's a little weird is the "target is captured 12 seconds ahead of the predicted time". But they perhaps predicted a time 12 seconds late on purpose, or are just using that as a device to show how 1337 they are.
Imagine you're writing an article about Bush addressing the nation you might prep with:
"Bush had his usual statesman like swagger as he approached the dais, 'fellow Americans' he drawled, before telling us we should give up our hard won cash to support those billionaires who'd gone one gamble to far. Why? 'stability' says President Bush whilst Obama and McCain look on silently praying Mammon that such stability can be bought before their term starts ..."
That's got to be pretty close?
Thing is, if you watched the opening via other channels, you'd know that the firework footprints you were seeing weren't real, BUT not faked - because the announcers/commentators would have told you that they weren't real.
Just because the channel you're watching doesn't tell you the details doesn't mean it's faked.
The Olympics ceremony was all a show. In movies they often have someone else singing instead of the star, in fact they also have body doubles. Given the amount of cheating in the Olympics, I'd cynically say that it's very in line with the real spirit of the games. Put on a good show and hope you don't get caught.
Lastly, while the Chinese are most certainly corrupt, there has been some accountability - the food safety head actually resigned. I believe the one before him was executed - he was found guilty of taking bribes etc.
They most certainly didn't get a USD20 million "golden parachute" package as a reward.