Nongfu Spring accuses paper of smear campaign
Print Edition
Close on the heels of the New Express Daily scandal that led to the arrest of a reporter, Nongfu Spring, a leading bottled drinking water, is suing Beijing Times for a series of what it called defamatory articles against the company earlier this year.
The newspaper reported in April that the quality of comapny’s bottled water was “even lower than those of tap water.”
The Hangzhou-based company in Zhejiang Province has now filed a defamation suit with a national press body, claiming that the newspaper hurt its business reputation with its false reporting. It is demanding 60 million yuan in compensation.
Targeting the company’s product quality and the provincial standard it follows, the month-long, 67-page criticism by Beijing Times eventually forced Nongfu Spring to suspend barreled water production in the Chinese capital.
The water company seemed to have found strength following recent revelations that a New Express Daily reporter took money to file a series of fabricated articles against Changsha-based Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science and Technology Co.
The reporter was arrested by police and the two top editors of the Guangzhou-based newspaper were eventually sacked from their job.
Yesterday, Zhou Li, a spokesman for Nongfu Spring, filed a complaint with the national office for publications under the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television.
Zhou said the reports by Beijing Times were unfounded. “They fabricated the opinions, caused public confusions, and were willful and malicious in their attacks,” Zhou said.
Following the reports, the Beijing quality watchdogs initiated an investigation into Nongfu Spring and temporarily suspended its production in Beijing for not applying national standards.
Zhong Shanshan, the company’s CEO and board chairman, argued that the standards of Zhejiang which the company follows were even stricter.
In May, the company announced its decision to cease production of barreled water in Beijing permanently as “we can’t produce water under such circumstances,” Zhong told a press conference at that time.
The company went so far as to allege that its rival C’estbon was behind the smear campaign.
Zhou told China National Radio yesterday that Nongfu Spring lost about 2 billion yuan worth of sales since the publication of the damning reports against the company in April.
Zhou said the claim that Nongfu Spring’s bottled water was no match even for tap water made no sense at all.
Besides meeting the DB33 standard, which is printed on the label, the company must also meet the national compulsory safety standard, neither of which is lower than the criteria for the tap water.
For the Zhejiang standards the company follows, which Beijing Times claimed had been done away with, there has never been any official statement to back up its argument.
The reports, citing the Beijing Association for Barreled Drinking Water as a source, claimed that Nongfu Spring’s barreled water was withdrawn from the shelves in Beijing, but Zhou said the association is only an industry body and has no rights to impose any such orders.
The company did not contact Beijing Times before taking its case to the media watchdog.
The newspaper too hasn’t responded to the charges.
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