When it comes to China stories, people will believe almost anything. Take, for instance, the reports about pollution being so severe in Beijing that residents now watch radiant sunrises broadcast on a huge screen in Tiananmen Square.

So, that never happened. As Tech in Asia flags,1 the sunrise is a clip from a tourism ad for Shandong province, in China’s northeast; it’s on screen for maybe 10 seconds or so per loop. But that didn’t prevent a slew of prominent media outlets—including Time,2 CBS News3 and the Huffington Post4—from running the story ,... But how do relatively respectable outfits like Time, HuffPo and CBS jump onboard with circulating fake stories? Simply by not checking, for one. ... What’s more unnerving, though, is that while several of the media outlets updated their posts already, none has changed the headline or noted that the story isn’t true. Does that mean that accuracy and accountability don’t matter for click-bait pieces5 about China that “feel” true? Unfortunately for readers, that seems to be the case.

• 1. source: http://www.techinasia.com/beijing-residents-watching-fake-sunrises-giant-tvs-pollution/
  "In truth, that sunrise was probably on the screen for less than 10 seconds at a time, as it was part of an ad for tourism in China’s Shandong province. The ad plays every day throughout the day all year round no matter how bad the pollution is. The photographer simply snapped the photo at the moment when the sunrise appeared."
• 2. source: http://world.time.com/2014/01/17/sunrise-in-smoggy-beijing/
• 3. source: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/beijing-turns-to-virtual-sunrise-due-to-polluted-air/
• 4. source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/17/beijing-fake-sunrise_n_4618536.html
• 5. See Also, Architizer: http://architizer.com/blog/smog-cities/