this surprised me. from what I can tell from your sources and Wikipedia:

✅ the tanks were indeed leaving the square.

✅ Tank Man stopped them, climbed onto the top of a tank and talked briefly with the soldiers inside, then was quickly shepherded away by two people. it's unclear whether the people were PLA or concerned bystanders. nothing is known of the man.

🤔 sources disagree on whether civilians were killed in the Square itself. some supposed witnesses were shown to have left or been elsewhere.

❌ at least 300 people, mostly civilians, were killed that night, according to the PRC itself. most of the casualties were likely students surrounding the square. from what I can tell it was likely a Kent State situation, where students were throwing rocks and setting fires, and the PLA overreacted with lethal force.

China's suppression of the media didn't do them any favors. the Tank Man photo wouldn't be so infamous but for the Streisand effect caused by PRC's heavy-handed censorship. rumors of a massacre in the Square would be easy to dispel if foreign journalists were allowed to stay and film. but protests were an embarrassment to China, and China sweeps embarrassments under the rug.

The only source I would trust here that you linked is the famous 1998 CJR article. It just points out the misnomer caused by what we call the incident to point out that mass killings happened elsewhere while students were peacefully evacuated from the square itself. Of course I also trust the photos you linked are real. But just like the aforementioned myth (also explored by the CJR article), you perpetuate the myth of the crackdown being on primarily student protests when far far more of the dead were of the inspired workers' protest, especially those killed as the army was heading into Tiananmen. Such violent crackdowns made it so Deng could not recover his influence until 1992.

Yes, students did stone and kill soldiers and Molotov APCs, including the lynching of (just) one soldier as depicted in the photos. But that does not justify the hundreds of protestors killed with live ammunition. Yes, there was no carnage in the square during the Tiananmen square massacres. Misnomers abound. But as a person I try to get others to understand me in communication. Yes, the "Tiananmen square" part is a misnomer. But who's gonna understand me if I go about every day saying "June Fourth Incident"? Not to mention a lot of the killings were also committed around 11 PM the previous day.

I also did a bit of a misnomer: It's dubious whether you could define the mass killings as massacres. My point was that China ordered the army to do what they did. It sounds to me like Kirp was characterizing the other regions' hatred to blame for what happened around Tiananmen, which hopefully we can agree was not what happened.