Foreign media at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests Foreign media at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests Foreign media institutions and correspondents were present for much of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. They included correspondents from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Voice of America (VOA), Cable News Network (CNN), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). Others included correspondents from then British-controlled Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many of the correspondents were in China to report on the visit of Mikhail Gorbachev or were covering the Asian Development Bank meeting that was happening in Beijing. Foreign media coverage of the protests became
Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident practitioners, but were not scrutinised for the methods they used. This resulted in the widespread use of torture, sometimes resulting in death. Tiananmen Square was one of the main venues where Falun Gong practitioners gathered to protest the persecution, usually by raising banners in defence of the group, or stage peaceful meditation sit-ins. Ian Johnson of the "Wall Street Journal" estimated that by 25 April 2000, more than 30,000 practitioners had been arrested for attempting to demonstrate in Beijing, most of them in or on the way to Tiananmen Square. Seven hundred Falun Gong followers were arrested during a demonstration