ABSTRACT

It was spring 2003 in Guangdong Province, south China. A mysterious disease began to spread quietly and rapidly. People showed symptoms of something similar to pneumonia, fi rst in one county and then throughout the entire province. Th ey were sent to hospitals and treated with the antibiotics for pneumonia, but to no avail. Some of the early patients died, and those infected later collapsed into critical conditions. Th reatened by the spread of a fatal and unknown epidemic, health offi cials reported the incidents to the national authorities and began to treat the disease as a national secret. An anonymous Short Message Service (SMS) message reached a journalist at the Southern Metro, a popular tabloid in the province, who published the fi rst story on what was later known as the SARS-Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-epidemic. Several news organizations followed suit, but before long, all coverage by local news organizations was censored, and the only coverage that appeared in the offi cial media was cover-up stories by the Xinhua News Agency.