US calls Kunming attack ‘act of terrorism’ amid accusations of bias in Western media reporting

A spokeswoman for the US State Department has acknowledged that the Kunming attack was an act of terrorism on Tuesday after China’s largest journalist association condemned Western media for “harbouring ulterior motives” when reporting last Saturday’s massacre that left 29 dead.

When asked to comment by a Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV reporter at a regular news briefing, Jen Psaki acknowledged that “the attack appeared to be an act of terrorism” because of a lack of “any other independent information”.

But she eventually gave in after being repeatedly asked to respond. “So we are calling this an act of terrorism,” she was quoted as saying.

Also on Tuesday, the government-backed All-China Journalists Association (ACJA), the country’s most authoritative journalist organisation, published a statement on its website stating “Some Western media ignored the most fundamental rule of journalism, displaying ambiguous attitudes and ulterior motives.”

The statement named television network CNN, and the Associated Press news agency, both US-based media organisations, claiming that in reports of the Kunming attack quotation marks were placed around words such as “terrorism” and “assailants” was used rather than “terrorists”.