Beijing: Chinese internet giant Tencent has been forced to apologise after its video team reported that a typhoon had wiped out the entire population of a province in east China that is home to nearly 100 million people.
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Typhoon Lekima hit the Chinese provinces of Zhejiang, Shandong and Anhui over the weekend, forcing more than two million residents to flee.
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China’s official news agency Xinhua said late Tuesday that at least 49 people were killed with dozens still missing.
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But Tencent Video sent a news alert to its subscribers on Monday saying the typhoon had “killed nearly everyone” in the eastern province of Shandong and seven people were missing.
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The alert cited the provincial emergency management department as the news source.
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Shandong is one of China’s most populous provinces, with 99 million residents, according to a 2016 mini-census.
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Minutes after pushing out the erroneous alert, Tencent Video apologised for the gaffe, saying it was caused by an editorial error and vowed to “strictly review” its content before publishing.
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A corrected news flash followed, saying “Lekima has killed five people in Shandong”.
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State news agency Xinhua said the rainfall recorded this weekend in Shandong province was the largest since records began in 1952.
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Tencent Video is China’s biggest video-streaming platform with over 900 million active users on their mobile app and 89 million subscribers as of March.
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Screenshots of the erroneous Tencent message were widely shared and ridiculed on China’s Twitter-like Weibo, with many users criticising the slip.
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“You have an army of reviewers to erase even the slightest social protest. But you can’t check your own content at a time of a major disaster?” wrote one netizen.
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The Morning and Evening Brief###
The Morning and Evening Brief