Zaobao
联合早报, Nanyang Sin-Chew Lianhe Zaobao, commonly abbreviated as Lianhe Zaobao, is the largest Singaporean Chinese-language newspaper. It is owned by SPH Media Trust. The same company owns the English-language newspaper The Straits Times.
In the immediate aftermath of 813, Zaobao published a number of articles repeating the same smears against Zhang Zhehan rampant on Weibo at the time. For example, one article[1] published on August 15, 2021, erroneously state that Nogi Shrine is a major controversial shrine and imply that Dewi Sukarno is a politically problematic person.
On February 26, 2022, Zaobao published an editorial[2] sharply critical of efforts to clarify the smears against Zhang Zhehan, calling it "white-washing", and stating that he "should die" according to popular sentiment.
The Zaobao post on Twitter announcing the article made the additional error of claiming that Zhang Zhehan was "on hot search this week". Strangely, a Weibo marketing account which took part in spreading slander about Zhang Zhehan on 813 also made a post with identical photo and almost identical text as Zaobao, also claiming that he was "on hot search". There have been no hot searches about Zhang Zhehan since August 2021.
Information from anonymous sources have revealed that CAPA had been trying to get Zhang onto Weibo hot search with the intent of initiating a second round of smears against him akin to 813, and had in fact purchased hot search spots just before the Zaobao article was published, but the effort was shut down by the CAC.
Many fans wrote and replied to Zaobao asking them to retract or correct their editorial. It was pointed out that Zaobao themselves had published articles in 2016 and 2018 reporting on the cherry blossoms at Yasukuni and the blooming of the "standard tree" there.
Zaobao subsequently deleted their tweet and retweeted a new post without the "hot search" claim, but did not retract nor edit their original editorial.