Reporters sneak photos of pop star’s body
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Chinese singer Yao Beina passed away after a battle with breast cancer last week. Picture: ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images.
Source: Getty Images
A CHINESE newspaper has been forced to apologise after journalists snuck into an operating theatre to take photographs of a dead pop star.
The Shenzhen Evening News issued a statement apologising to family, friends and fans of Yao Beina, a popular singer who died of breast cancer on January 16 aged 33.
The paper admitted its reporters had snuck into an operating theatre to take photographs of her body while doctors were removing her corneas, which had been donated to science.
#ChinesePopSinger #YaoBeina died today in #Shenzhen due to #BreastCancer. She was 33. http://t.co/DV5MH9QYyC pic.twitter.com/8K6OAdUW6W
— China.org.cn (@chinaorgcn) January 16, 2015
Yao Beina starred in the reality TV show Voice of China and was renowned for recording the Chinese version of Frozen’s theme song Let It Go. She had been the subject of tabloid reports since undergoing a mastectomy after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2011.
The singer was hospitalised in December after it was found the disease had spread to her lungs and brain,The Telegraph reports. Yao’s decision to donate her corneas to science had earned her praise across the country according to the South China Morning Post. However there was also extreme tabloid interest in her case.
The pictures of her body have not been published but their existence was uncovered by a blogger on Wiebo, a Chinese social networking site. The news sparked outrage on social media with Yao’s manager demanding an apology. Shenzhen Evening News said reporters had deleted photos of the scene at the family’s request.
Reporters sneak into hospital mortuaryas medical workers take picturesof popular singer Yao Beina’s dead body,where will media stop
— Ajay Bharti (@bharti_ajay) January 18, 2015
Beijing Foreign Studies University’s dean of the Centre for International Communication Studies, Qiao Mu, told the South China Morning Post that entertainment journalists in mainland China have little regard for the privacy of celebrities due to tight controls on political leaders.
“On the mainland, entertainment reporters are even more ruthless than their Western counterparts, or even Hong Kong reporters, because there is no way for them to dig out any private stories about presidents, or even local party chiefs,” Qiao Mu said.
