What is real? Chinese cardboard buns report fabricated — or is the 'truth' equally false?

Yesterday's comments included one on my July 13, 2007 "Cardboard Buns" post, from a reader who wrote, "It is just fabricated news by the reporter."

I was then directed to today's China Daily story by Zhu Zhe, which follows.

TV report on cardboard buns 'fabricated'

A TV report earlier this month that purportedly showed a Beijing seller using softened chopped cardboard as the main ingredient in steamed buns has been dismissed as false news.

The Beijing municipal government said last night that investigations had found an employee surnamed Zi with Beijing Television fabricated and directed the sensational program for higher audience ratings. Zi is being held under criminal custody.

The program, broadcast on July 8 on Beijing TV Life Channel, featured the maker of the buns — or baozi — talking about how the product was made and sold in the capital's sprawling Chaoyang District.

The report said 60 percent of the bun's ingredients were chopped cardboard that had been soaked in caustic soda. Pork flavor and fatty meat were added to the cardboard, it claimed.

The story gained more currency after China Central Television relayed the program nationwide last Thursday, and added to international concerns about made-in-China products.

However, the government announcement said that Zi had provided all the cardboard and asked the vendor to soak it. "It's all cheating," it said.

The municipal government also said that after the report, industrial and commercial officers inspected bun sellers across the city, but found no such problem.

Beijing TV apologized in the announcement for failing to check the authenticity of the report, adding it will punish editors involved and make efforts to improve professional ethics of its staff.

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I decided to sleep on things to help clarify my thinking.

Alas, it's about as muddy today as when I dropped off last night.

I watched once again both YouTube videos (above) I included in my July 13, 2007 post but they're no help at all: could be real or not.

See, here's the thing: the original report made headlines worldwide, none of them good as far as China is concerned, especially now that the country is getting body-slammed from every side about just about everything it does and makes.

So it would clearly be in the interest of China and its grand panjandrums to concoct a story about how some rogue reporter ginned up a sensational scoop to get attention — clearly a successful effort, if indeed that was the case.

But no one but the reporter and the putative cardboard bun maker and the Chinese powers that be know if it's fiction or real.

You and I simply can't tell, at the distant remove from which we observe.

So much of the daily news is like this: seen through a filtered glass, distortedly, to paraphrase Philip K. Dick.

Which leads me to an apotheosis of this problem of early 21st century "belief theory," if you will, a new novel (published five weeks ago, on June 12, 2007) entitled "The Execution Channel."

By Ken MacLeod, it takes place in the not too distant future, in which belief is the battlefield and war is fought by opposing teams of content creators who go deep — very, very deep — into the Internet to create alternative accounts of events and their background, complete with the virtual equivalent of "pocket litter," to the point that truth becomes simply and solely a matter of personal preference.

Very highly recommended by me is this frightening, absorbing novel.