The Official Line

After every rift the official explanation comes fast and in step: "thin upper atmosphere," "ionospheric disturbance," "electromagnetic anomaly." The wording is identical, and inside the window from 04:50 to 05:10 in the small hours a dozen-odd outlets file it simultaneously without changing a word.

The first piece ran to 180 characters, hung on page three of the local-news section, quoting a Weather Bureau spokesman saying "preliminary assessment: a natural phenomenon, not earthquake clouds, not an astronomical event," no photograph attached, comments closed. Switch to another outlet and it is the same piece, down to the punctuation. Switch again and it is still the same. That the Weather Bureau's night duty took a call from the public in the middle of the night and triggered a response isn't in itself outrageous; a dozen-odd outlets running identical copy inside 20 minutes means the copy came from upstream.

One official line that sounds harmless is enough to send the great majority back to sleep and to have them put last night's wrongness down to themselves. What copy like this wants is the space filled.

The method later reached from the filing end onto the editor's desk. The chief editor at one weekly took a very polite phone call from someone describing himself as an inter-ministerial project liaison, who said there was "false information involving atmospheric and electromagnetic anomalies" going round, and that the outlet was asked to "verify carefully and avoid causing panic." No names, no pressure, only letting the editor know that someone was watching.

The local-news section in the same period had not stopped running. An old man went missing in Banqiao and the police put out a notice; residents of an old tower in Neihu complained collectively about strange sounds in the middle of the night, the city sent someone to look and found nothing. These were broadcast as usual, written up as usual, hung on the news ticker as usual, at greater length than that 180-character piece. The only thing given unified wording was the line in the sky.

Once the copy is out, the search results draw themselves in. Search "sky pre-dawn" and two posts that missed the point are left; search "3:17 sky" and there are 0; search "Weather Bureau anomaly" and only that original piece remains, with no comments under it, no citations, no shares.

As though the thing had never happened at all.