Bogus bun scandal

By Ling Woo Liu | July 19, 2007 | +

It turns out that the cardboard bun scandal–the sensational story that’s had people talking (and cracking jokes, ie “I always thought those lamb skewers tasted a little funny”) over the last few weeks–was an elaborate hoax concocted by a freelance TV reporter in Beijing.

This AP story says that an investigation determined that the reporter, whose last name is Zi, gathered meat, flour and cardboard and convinced four migrant workers to make the buns while he filmed them. Beijing Television (BTV) apologized on-air Wednesday night, and said that the reporter had been detained by police. The station also said it would punish the editors of the program, and take steps to improve its ethical standards.

Though the reporter claimed to have obtained the footage with a hidden camera, I still found it a bit suspect that a food vendor would openly admit to using 60 percent cardboard and 40 percent pork in his buns. And why would the vendors demonstrate the toxic cardboard-soaking process in front of any patrons? It seems that, in the midst of the China food scare, many people wanted to believe this was true.

Related Topics: China

@TIMEWorld

Latest on Global Spin

israel May 15, 2012

Netanyahu’s New Government: Warming to Peace Talks with the Palestinians?

A flurry of gestures toward the Palestinian leadership suggests that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his new role as leader of a center-right government, is warming toward the resumption of peace talks — or at least giving the appearance of warming; call it a rosy glow rising from a pair of announcements on Monday. One was about Palestinian prisoners who had been carrying out a mass hunger strike for weeks inside Israeli prisons. With several prisoners near death, Netanyahu approved an agreement that improves prison conditions and permits visits by family members in the Gaza Strip, the heavily guarded enclave that Palestinians have been allowed out of only for medical emergencies. Greeted by Palestinians as a victory, the deal eased concerns that a prisoner’s death might combust what are usually routine protests planned for Tuesday’s commemoration of Nakba Day, the “catastrophe” of Israel’s 1948 victory over Arab forces trying to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.

Middle East May 15, 2012

Palestinians Mark Their Day of “Catastrophe”

Protesters challenge Israeli troops in the West Bank while commemorating the Nakba, or “day of catastrophe” in Arabic, which marks the day when Israel declared its statehood in 1948—an act which forced thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and into a life of exile

U.K. May 15, 2012

Rebekah Brooks, Husband Charged in Phone-Hacking Scandal

The convoluted saga of the British phone-hacking scandal seems to have been dragging on longer than a back-to-back performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Yet despite the demise of Rupert Murdoch‘s News of the World, the launching of a public inquiry into British press standards, three police investigations and more than 40 arrests, the scandal has yet to draw real blood. The closest it has come was a report released this month by a Parliamentary committee, which accused Murdoch of turning a blind eye to the hacking at his paper and declared him “not a fit person” to run an international company — a damning conclusion that nonetheless seems to have had little immediate effect.