N-TV, headquartered in Germany, used TV footage showing police with captured protestors in a report on the Tibet riots. The footage had been shot in Nepal, the police were Nepalese.

Netizens at the online forum www.huanqiu.com said that to destroy the reputation of the Chinese government with unfounded material has been a frequently used tactic by some overseas media.

One netizen said a Canadian traveller who witnessed the riot in Lhasa wrote in his blog: those rioters assaulted civilians and policemen. This would have been cracked down on more severely if it had happened in Western countries.

"Why has no major overseas media cited these words?" the netizen complained.

The Canadian traveller also put in his blog a photograph he had taken of Chinese Armed Police building a wall of shields to defend against stones and bricks thrown by rioters.