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China Slams Western Media
By Paul Midler | March 20, 2008
Western media is biased. It doesn’t understand the situation. But please keep out, if you don’t mind! From an editorial at People’s Daily:
Probably the whole world is on tiptoes, eager to find out what’s going on in Lhasa and other Tibetan-inhabited regions in western China. While we highly appreciate the efforts of the global media in seeking facts and providing accurate, objective and timely reporting, we are somewhat disappointed to find, from time to time, rather biased news coverage.
…How come the riot in Lhasa, which featured violent manslaughter, arson and sabotage of public facilities by ransacking mobs, was being used by some people in the West against China? Is it because they really know too little about China and China’s Tibet; whatever they know always comes from the so-called “Tibetan government in exile” and other anti-China cliques?
Topics: China |
March 20th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
Whenever they don’t like what they read in the newspapers, they claim that the reports are not objective.
March 21st, 2008 at 1:27 am
If foreign countries who had concerns about Tibet knew anything about hard-knuckles diplomacy they WOULD link the situation in Tibet with the Olympics and demand that China allow foreign journalists into the areas to report objectively—or the Olypmics will become YaoMing and President Hu Jintao playing an endless game of HORSE in the Bird’s Nest. There is a time to be tough and that time is now…
March 21st, 2008 at 2:02 am
The lying bastards said they’d open their country up to the media in the runup to the glorious, harmonious Olympics and now they are reneging. Typically Chinese…
March 21st, 2008 at 8:39 am
Keeping foreign journalists out is the ultimate declaration of bias. Whatever thin thread of credibility China tried to establish is now all gone.
We all know whether the Chinese media are biased. We just have to wait and see whether the Western media are biased. But shutting them out from the field means whatever they care to say are all “unbiased” based on available information.
March 21st, 2008 at 9:46 am
Here’s an exchange between an American journalist and his boss back in the United States.
Boss: “Get to Tibet!”
Journalist: “I can’t. Roads are blocked.”
Boss: “Interview some other journalists then.”
Journalist: “They can’t get in either.”
Boss: “What are we going to write on?”
Jouranlist: “How about our failure to get the story.”
Boss: “Excellent. Write it up!”
Failure to get the story is not a story in and of itself. At least for most other areas of reporting it is not. The laid back attitude of Western media on this one, by the way only proves to Chinese government leaders that controlling the press works, i.e., there are no real repurcussions. The journalists will find SOMETHING to write about anyway.