One of China's biggest bottled-water producers has filed complaints to
the top media regulator, accusing a Beijing newspaper of deliberately
defaming the company.To get more news about
Nongfuspring, you can visit en.nongfuspring official website.
After
verbal confrontations in April and May, Nongfu Spring, a bottled-water
giant based in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, said it sent
workers on Monday to the State General Administration of Press,
Publication, Radio, Film and Television to submit complaints that the
Beijing Times had published as many as 76 "fake" stories to taint the
image of the company.
"The Beijing Times intentionally and
systematically published 76 negative stories about Nongfu Spring from
April 10 to May 7. ... It is an unprecedented case in China's history
that a news organization launched such large-scale critical coverage of
one single enterprise," the company said in a statement on its Sina
Weibo micro-blogging account on Monday morning.
The statement
then accused the Beijing Times of making irresponsible claims that the
company was following standards even laxer than those for tap water when
manufacturing bottled-water products. The newspaper also fabricated
remarks from the national and provincial health watchdogs to support its
"biased" reports, the company said.
Nongfu further blasted the
Beijing Times for never listening to it for 26 consecutive days when it
issued negative reports concerning the company.The newspaper also
imposed "propagandistic violence" on the company by highlighting quotes
by some industry guilds that were untrue about Nongfu's products, the
statement added, saying the newspaper was deliberately smearing Nongfu.
"We
have submitted evidence to the administration and hope it can
thoroughly investigate the case," said the statement.The dispute started
on April 10 when the Beijing newspaper published a report accusing
Nongfu Spring of adopting the water-quality standards of Zhejiang
province instead of the stricter national standards, although the water
is sold all over China.
In subsequent stories, the newspaper was involved in fierce exchanges of accusations and counterattacks with the company.
Zhong
Shanshan, chairman of Nongfu Spring, said at a news conference on May 6
in Beijing that the company has adopted both national standards and
provincial requirements in Zhejiang, and that the national standards are
mandatory for all bottled-water enterprises, which is why they are not
labeled on its products.His remarks were later endorsed by health
authorities in Zhejiang, which said random checks on four batches of
Nongfu Spring bottled water from its six production sites on April 11 by
the quality watchdog of Hangzhou all passed tests and met national
mandatory standards for bottled drinking water.
The Wall