The PBS Mediashift site has an insider’s account of how a Reporters Without Borders activist broadcast a 20-minute human rights message via FM radio from the Beijing International Media Center, 12 hours before the Olympics opening ceremony.
At 7:50 a.m., it’s time to go. I take my bag and walk toward the BIMC. It’s early. I can see fewer policemen than I did last night. I sit on a wall on the other side of the road, trying to act casually, as a tourist. The antennas are hidden within hiking sticks. I take them out of my backpack and screw them together with an additional piece supposed to link the antennas and to allow the signal to be transmitted. I put a huge Beijing 2008 flag on top of the hiking sticks and it looks as though I am holding a flagpole.
You can also listen to the content of the broadcast in Mandarin, English, and French at the Reporters sans Frontieres site.
