In January 24, 2011, Pew Research Center’s Project on Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) released a report (“THE U.S. MEDIA ON CHINA“) analyzing U.S. media coverage of China in the last few years, an ongoing effort started since 1997. The report asked, “When China has made news, what is it Americans are learning about?” That question was precisely answered.
In this post, I will take it further and share with you how the U.S. media narratives were as consumed by the American public. I will then share with you whether those narratives are truthful. In fact, as you will see in the PEJ report, the U.S. media reporting of China really vacillates around few dominant and recurring negative themes. And, they are not so truthful; definitely not objective.
There is however one exception, and in writing this post, I feel saddened because the topic I feel the narrative is finally correct is one of great tragedy. Read more…
Chris Wallace of Fox News hosted Jon Stewart in a pretty interesting exchange about the state of media in the U.S.. Stewart is a long time critic of Fox News; not as much for the sensationalism, misinformation, and leanings towards conflict which he finds in America’s mass media, but the ‘partisanship’ he thinks Fox News partakes in. It’s a 24 minute video and I highly recommend viewing in its entirety. In my view, the ENTIRE American media is in ‘partisanship’ against the world. The media is worthwhile examining, and I invite you to share your thoughts.
I highly recommend heading over to the Shanghai Scrap blog where American writer Adam Minter interviews his friend, Mara Hvistendahl, who has just published the book, “Unnatural Selection: Missing Girls, Abortion, and the Perversion of Choice.” To give you an idea of the conversation, I have excerpted a question below. You might want the book too.
Scrap: Focusing on China – it’s almost accepted gospel, for those not familiar with the issue, that infanticide, the one-child policy, and abandonment account for the country’s skewed sex ratio, and that abortion is only part of the mix. Yet you not only object to that formulation, you seem to imply that it’s both condescending and a gross distortion that obscures the real issues. Could you give a sense of how important each of those facts is, in fact, to China’s gender issues, and why they are only a small part of the overall picture?
Students learning to become hairdressers at Lanxiang Vocational School in Jinan
Google has been up to making empty allegations against China since it decided to withdraw last year. In its latest salvo, it accused the Chinese government of a phishing attack on Gmail accounts. As predicted, such allegations are spreading like wild fire in the Western media. In fact, the innuendos are narrated into facts, and it is always amazing to see how this propaganda machinery works.
It claimed the phishing attacks “appears to originate from Jinan, China.” The Lanxiang Vocations School which was at the center of Google’s last year claim of Gmail attacks is also in Jinan. Apparently, the hairdressing students at Lanxiang no longer find this spotlight funny.
Did Google offer any more facts than last time? No. But, seriously, let’s look at some real ones. In this respected business and venture capital journal, Venture Beat, Matt Marshall tells us: Read more…
Ai Weiwei appeared in Western headlines again after Xinhua reported Beijing police saying he was under ‘house surveillance’ and under investigation for tax evasion. (I should mention that while searching for materials for this post, I was struck by the lack of search results on Google on ‘Ai Weiwei’ from China. Why? I would venture to say, therein lies the true essence of Google’s struggles in China in search; but we have already made this argument in the past.)
Anyways, the Western media all seems to be colluding in characterizing the ‘house surveillance’ as simply Ai Weiwei went ‘missing,’ in the sense that the Chinese government is a irrational kidnapping criminal. By the way, the Chinese people have picked up on this behavior of the West (in Chinese here). Why spare no effort in understanding Chinese law and explain legal procedures behind this detention? In this post, I’d like to share key passages from China’s Criminal Procedure Law governing this ‘house surveillance’ as well an Op-Ed from China Daily writer, Mo Nong, called, “Ideological bias clouds Western views.” Read more…
Is it conceivable that the Chinese government ban the jasmine flower in China? That is exactly what a group of journalists at the New York Times argue in their recent article, “Catching Scent of Revolution, China Moves to Snip Jasmine.” I asked Andrew Jacobs, one of the authors if he believed what he wrote? In response, he said:
Yes, I do believe what I wrote because myself and two other reporters spoke to dozens of growers, wholesalers and retailers. Have you, by any chance, done the same? I welcome you to come to China and do some reporting and find out the truth.
Funny, I was just in China last month. (See, “All happy on the Wangfujing front.”) So, I decided to call 北京莱太花卉. I asked an employee there, “美国媒体真是很坏. 他们说莉花不能卖. 你听说茉莉花不能卖吗?” She said “没有听说过.” We both laughed when I said, “美国媒体有神经病.” In short, there is no ban. The lady I spoke to laughed at my comment the U.S. media is mentally retarded. Read more…
Today, I am writing about an article at the San Francisco Chronicle by Andrew S. Ross on a supposed Chinese government denial of service attack on change.org. The article was dated April 28, 2011, entitled, “Change.org attacked after backing China dissident.” This date is important, so make a note of it.
Because Ai Weiwei is a headline in the Western media, anything related to him makes for ‘good’ news. This is a media trick. Bear in mind, banks or any other millions of web sites are being hacked everyday from everywhere, around the world. And, certainly, given the narrative of an always ‘bad’ China in the Western media makes an ‘attack’ from China a ‘good’ story. So, I understand this fetish.
The problem, though, I have with this Adrew Ross article is that it reported virtually no fact towards the narrative, and it relies entirely on hearsay and innuendo. Before I dive into the details, I would like to tell American journalists that they first need to have some decency and professionalism. Given America has so many chronic problems, I think they should channel their energy at solving America’s real ones; not to get Americans confused and distracted with arbitrary things of no consequence. Read more…
Regardless of your personal views about Wikileaks exposing secret U.S. documents, you will find this exclusive interview by Russia Today of Juliane Assange fascinating. He also weighs in on Google, Facebook, the Guardian, the New York Times, and media in general.
No kidding! I am still deciding whether this is funny. Google search this phrase, “China bans time travel,” and it will yield the following (results around April 19, 2011 22:50pm PST):
Afghan children killed in the Afghan war (note: NOT from the March 1, 2011 U.S./NATO attack)
(Warning. Image on the left is graphic. Clicking on it will show a larger version of it. Seeing it has made me sick to my stomach.)
The U.N. reported in 2009 346 Afghan children were killed and more than half were killed by NATO, mostly through air strikes.
Just in the beginning of this month, nine Afghan children were killed by U.S./NATO helicopter attack in Kunar Province. Media watch-dog, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), has systemically documented the lack of coverage in the U.S. over this tragedy. I wondered if Americans are aware of the brutal deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan would they still support the bombings in Libya.
I just searched for images of children killed in the Afghan and Iraqi wars and saw some of them. If there is any real humanity in the Western media, they need to show these pictures, not just words justifying the wars. Without the images, Western citizens will continue to be apathetic to the horrific deaths the wars are causing. Below is analysis from FAIR: Read more…
Ronda Hauben has an excellent article on how the international media can play a constructive role with United Nations in fostering peaceful relations between nations. Her article appeared in the the 4th Media. She is a correspondent at the United Nations for a number of media organizations.
“International Media ‘the 16th Member of the Security Council’”
Ronda Hauben
13:19 BeiJing Time,Thursday, March 17, 2011
“You are the sixteenth member of the Security Council.”
– China’s UN Ambassador Li Baodong speaking to the international media
In March, China took over the rotating presidency of the Security Council for the month. As is the practice at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, on March 2, the 2nd day of his presidency, Li Baodong, China’s Ambassador to the UN, held a press conference for journalists at the UN.(1) At the beginning of the press conference, he welcomed the media, saying that the media is the “sixteenth member of the Security Council.” (There are 15 member nations on the UN Security Council.) Read more…
Premier Wen Jiabao reaffirms political and economic reforms (China Daily)
China Daily has just reported Premier Wen Jiabao reaffirming political and economic reforms. On the table are government transparency, creating conditions allowing people to criticize and supervise the government, and media being a watch-dog.
Wu Bangguo, Chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, recently precautioned other Chinese leaders of “chaos unless correct path is taken.”
Wu’s key point is that China should not blindly follow others’ political systems for the sake of following. Rather, China should advance one suiting her own conditions.
He even pointedly said, “on the basis of China’s conditions, we’ve made a solemn declaration that we’ll not employ a system of multiple parties holding office in rotation.” Read more…
[Updated March 3, 2011: Please refer to comment below. Apparently, this disabling of the link over at Reddit and deletion of the poster comments were done by the poster himself. I will chalk this up as a lesson I need to be more careful in not reading to much into something that isn't. I am sorry, folks and also to Reddit.]
An interesting act of moderation yesterday over at Reddit.com yesterday deserves some coverage. I really don’t have an opinion about Reddit itself, except that ocassionally we have traffic from them because their readers reference articles on this blog.
Thanks to Web technologies (web archive, images search engine), the Chinese bloggers have once again called the Western media’s bluff on exaggerated reporting of China’s “Jasmine Revolution” non-event. Our prior post has highlighted Roland Soong’s recent article, “Fake Western Media Coverage Of Jasmine Revolution In China.” This has been a pattern. Read more…
ESWN recently translated a Chinese post from Anti CNN documenting fake photos used by Western media in fomenting a “Jasmine Revolution” story and he titled it, “Fake Western Media Coverage Of Jasmine Revolution In China.” Here is an example, an article written by Reuters and sold to Irish Independent for distribution; never-mind the article itself having little fact, the Reuters photo itself was made up: Read more…
I have been wanting to define what the term “West” means, especially as in “Western media.” Often times in debates, people will toss out a statement like, “the West is not a monolithic entity.” Well, that statement is certainly true in many cases. For example, the Europeans are against genetically modified organisms and crops whereas the U.S. is in favor. The Germans and the French were against the Iraq invasion where the U.K. supported the U.S.. For those of us explaining the Chinese perspective, we too will say, “the Chinese perspectives are broad and varied.” That is equally true.
On the other hand, Western leaders (Obama or whomever) will say “we the West” stand for this and for that. The Western media do that all the time too. Again, that presumed unity may be true in some cases and false in the rest. Another example difference is universal health coverage, though the U.S. took a big step in that direction only recently. Read more…
Noshir Gowadia was in the Western press lately, because back in August 2010, a Hawaii court convicted him of selling military secrets to China. BBC carried a report with the by-line: “A US engineer who sold military secrets to China has been sentenced to 32 years in prison.” We can expect the media to predictably draw a connection with the J-20 stealth fighter. The buzz now, rather in August 2010, of course is to milk the J-20 news.
I am not really writing about Gowadia though. Regardless of the case, any national working with foreign countries on weapons technology is essentially playing with fire. Impossible for us average citizens to weigh in on something like this. Instead, I have a simple thought I would like to share. Read more…
No doubt many of us on HH have been paying attention to the Egypt news. But what caught my eyes recently is a slew of news reports accusing China of censoring the Egypt news (Time, WSJ, and Wired).
However, when I (and other bilingual readers) searched for news on Egypt in China – we discover it is not censored. Baidu, Tudou, Sina, CCTV all are carrying this story. Here’re some netter comments:
[Time] Jim: What rubbish. I live and work in China – am from America – and read about this every day ! The continued demonization of China is pathetic but worse filled with hyperbole and lies like this posting by a supplosedly legitimate news source. What crap. Read more…
Through his agent and his blog, Lang Lang responded to Chinese media about recent accusation promoted by the likes of Fox News that his choice of song for the White House state dinner performance was “anti-US.” Below are my translations of some excerpts from an article carried on sina.com.cn of Lang Lang’s response.
Nicholas Kristof, a Pulitzer Prize winner, made a dare today to China’s censorship. In his NYT Op-ed piece, “Banned in Beijing!” he tells his readers him starting a Chinese blog inside China containing “counterrevolutionary praise of dissidents.” He expects his blog being shut down and wants his readers to watch as it happens. Certainly, he has come up with a very clever way to make news being a so called journalist.
Remember the Lhasa riot of 2008? Never-mind the Westerners on the grounds reporting. The Western media faked images (remember the CNN cropping out rioters with bricks in hand) and were only capable of writing their narrative; forget about truth. Those same people blamed on the Chinese government for not letting them freely report. Kristof has just reminded me once again, they are interested in making news and cooking ‘facts’ supporting their narratives.
He reminds me of the “freedom” voyeurs in the West whose self-obsessed views about “freedom” must be grafted unto whatever the latest fad is; this case being the Internet. He mind as well talk about China’s high way system transforming China into a “free” society. How about China’s zippy new high speed rail ways having the same effect? Or the explosion of newspapers. Some Pulitzer Prize winner he is. In this post, I simply cannot resist poking fun at this ridiculous narrative, a concoction of half truths, tricks, and occasional facts. I am poking fun at every bit of the article. Read more…
I am sure many of you have been following Chinese President Hu and U.S. President Obama’s speeches and Q&A’s with the media over the last couple of days. The governments are absolutely trying to be constructive in their relations. For that, it’s been refreshing to see.
After hearing them speak directly, I must say though, the nuances in the Western media are largely lost. They are not going to be respectful of China having a different political system as Obama acknowledged. They are not going to accept that China has a different history as Obama apparently understood. They are not going to be respectful of China as Obama has shown. Read more…
China President Hu Jintao greeted by U.S. Vice President Biden (China Daily)
China President Hu Jintao has landed in U.S. on his official state-to-state visit and was greeted at the airport by U.S. Vice President Biden today.
The U.S. media continues the same old tune: ‘currency manipulation’, ‘human rights’, and etc. I hope Presidents Hu and Obama make pragmatic breakthroughs at the conclusion of this visit.
For now, I would like to take this occasion in highlighting some of our recent posts dispelling this various nonsense in the U.S. media.
In November 2010, a U.S. congressional committee made some astounding remarks against China on the above issues. We where shocked a branch of the U.S. government would stoop so low and take such an unintelligent stance like the media. Allen and I wrote this, “A point by point rebuttal to the 2010 USCC Annual Report.” Read more…
Umm...Americans are capitalists. Money rules the day. The person offering to do the job for less gets the job. The cheapest product gets bought. Other countries are willing to do jobs for less than Americans so they get the jobs. Chinese products are cheaper so they get bought.
Maybe if America fought less wars and gave less monetary aid to foreign countries, then their taxes could go down and citizens could afford to pay a little more for Made in the USA, or companies could afford to pay 300% more per worker hour (probably not).
As an ancient kung-fu master once said, 'the further away from yourself you seek the answer, the further you get from the solution'. Don't look to change others in order to solve your own problems. tom chang
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