Ohio practitioners presented a News Conference about "Persecution of Falun Gong practitioners" on Sept 30, 2000 in Columbus, the State Capital. Reporters from major local Newspapers attended the News Conference and wrote up a positive story in bold headlines the next day, October 1, 2000. Below is the article reported on by the AP about the peaceful petition of Falun Gong practitioners at Tiananmen Square on Oct 1.
The news conference started out with a brief introduction to Falun Gong and the recent persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China. Then, six practitioners demonstrated the exercises. Afterward, the video of "Falun Gong Real Stories -- part 2" was shown to the audience. During the last 15 minutes' inquiry and discussion after the conference, reporters repeatedly asked if any practitioners' relatives or friends had experienced persecution and harassment, or any disturbance that was directly related to practitioners. In the formal news release the next day, a reporter used "China persecution to Falun Gong has affected local American citizens" as the subtitle of a detailed report on how local practitioners were disturbed, such as personal mails sent home to China from a local practitioner were illegally opened; family members were harassed and home phones were tapped. Another practitioner's e-mail box was paralyzed by thousands of foreign e-mails, in order to stop this practitioner from e-mailing "The real story of Falun Gong." These facts were only mentioned to reporters after the news conference and not prepared ahead of time.
Before the news conference, we sent out invitations to 400 media sources in Ohio. However, the majority of them expressed their principle of reporting local news primarily and not much attention was given to international news. Through this incidence we realized that in order to tell the truth of the persecution of Falun Gong to the media and to draw their attention, we should use our status as "local citizens" and send invitations for the news conference. When presenting the persecution of Falun Gong in China, we should also emphasize things that happened to our relatives or us. This will help in drawing media attention to Falun Gong. After we shared this experience with practitioners from the adjacent cities, practitioners from the two nearby towns are planning to have similar type of press conferences in the near future.
Ohio Practitioners
Oct. 2, 2000
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