Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot 3.b) Somebody else posted links to show that these photos where not from a few nights ago, but from 2 years ago. "Bad journalism"? It is what it says it is: reporting of a major rumor that goes around Weibo. How is that not news worthy?
Don't get me started on that one. That rumor is quoted from The Epoch Times, a U.S.-based “newspaper” with a very clear political agenda. This isn't a trustworthy source to quote from if you know even a tiny bit about this agency's motivation and track record of faking stuff. BTW the quoted picture [1] is a freaking tank , not any ordinary armed police/military vehicles from the previous rumor. Any one with a common…
Btw, how do you know that the Epoch Times started the whole rumor? According to the article it came from Weibo.
The intention of the article is probably not so much to speculate whether there was a coup in China (which would unlikely pass unnoticed).
It is rather a report of the state of the society during the begining of a very unstable 2 years to come for the country. XJP has not even taken over the first of the 3 positions he needs to occupy to become the leader of the country.
At the same time, China has to continue to shift its economic model in a very fundamental way. And at the same time people getting more and more unhappy about the social inequality and the behavior of the new rich. Not to mention the continuing problems in the housing market.
> And since when does quoting disproved rumors from untrustworthy sources make good journalism?
It may help the reader to form their own opinion about the rumors, as opposed to CCTV style "this is the truth" reporting. Otherwise you may see the tank photos somewhere else and take them for real, because nobody told you that they had been disproved already. There is a long list of such photos in the history of journalism, photos that are still today taken for real by many people even though they had been disproved decades ago.