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Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 23, 2022

How US media, liberal or conservative, turn Beijing Winter Olympics into another feather in their anti-China campaign cap

 

#Beijing2022 Opening Ceremony! | Full Replay


The Media Center of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games Photo: VCG The Media Center of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games Photo: VCG

The Beijing Winter Olympics successfully closed on Sunday. The sports event, "truly exceptional" as International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach described at Sunday's closing ceremony, showed the world not only the excellent performances of Olympians, but also how China overcame challenges to offer the participants high-quality facilities and services amid the global COVID-19 pandemic.
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Nonetheless, observers said it's sad that many foreign audiences, who usually receive information from some biased Western media outlets, the US media in particular, hardly knew about the Beijing Winter Games in an authentic and objective way.
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How did some influential American media outlets cover the Beijing Winter Olympics, when the US sees China as a strategic rival? The Global Times selected six US media outlets that represent different interest groups in the country, and collected and analyzed their recent coverage related to the Beijing Winter Games, trying to learn about the US media's strategy concerning the Games and the possible prejudice behind it.
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The selected six media outlets were CNN, The New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Fox News, National Public Radio (NPR), and USA Today.
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Media's 'China agenda' of Beijing Olympics
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By using online media monitoring tools, the Global Times reporters collected media coverage related to the Beijing Winter Games in February, particularly the week of February 14-21, focusing on coverage from CNN, NYT, WSJ, Fox News, NPR, and USA Today.
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These six major media outlets presented a very mixed tone in their discourse of the closing ceremony of the Winter Games on Monday night.
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In the titles of articles published by these US media outlets, most of the pieces included negative adjectives such as "rocky", "strange", "unwelcomed", "controversial", and "overshadowed by a doping scandal" in describing the Games, the Global Times reporters found. There were a lot references to alleged "human rights violations" and "excessively strict quarantine policies" in their review, though some articles provided a relatively objective picture of the well-designed and touching details of the closing ceremony.
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The sour grapes mentality exhibited by US media is on full display in these articles. NPR, for instance, even preposterously tagged the Games as "the most controversial, most unwelcoming Olympics of our lifetime" in an opinion piece by its staff.
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https://money.yahoo.com/most-controversial-most-unwelcoming-olympics-150319010.html
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US politics and media observers tend to classify CNN and NYT as the liberal media (or "left-wing"), WSJ and Fox as conservative media (or "right-wing"), while NPR and USA Today as relatively moderate media (or "center"). American media outlets with different editorial objectives speak for different groups in the US, while they usually stand together against other countries for US national interests.
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Looking back the past week, CNN, a typical "left-wing" media outlet known for its mostly liberal views, published some 73 articles covering the Beijing Winter Games from February 14 to 21. Fourteen of the articles were related to China or Chinese athletes, found he Global Times.
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Among the 14 articles, four were positive overall, covering the performances of Chinese gold medalists such as figure skaters Sui Wenjing and Han Cong.
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Three of the 14 articles were written in negative tones, which made far-fetched links between the sporting event and China's relationship with other countries. In a February 19 article reporting on a "doping scandal" about Russian skater Kamila Valieva, CNN frequently mentioned Ukraine's "border tension" and the "close ties" between China and Russia.
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The NYT is another mainstream media publication popular among US liberalists. The Global Times found that between February 14 and 21, it produced about 211 pieces covering the Beijing Winter Games, 30 pieces of which are related to China and Chinese athletes.
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The NYT reported on the Games with much broader views than CNN did. Among the 30 pieces, 12 were positive overall and covered not only Chinese gold medalists, but also the various cuisines provided at the Olympic Village, and China's speed trains near the Village.
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However, in its six pieces written in a negative tone, the NYT seemed to make bigger efforts in smearing China with strange, baseless accusations. In a February 19 article reporting on a "doping scandal" about Russian skater Kamila Valieva, CNN frequently mentioned Ukraine's "border tension" and the "close ties" between China and Russia, trying to hint at China being behind the Ukrainian crisis. That was neither true nor related to the Beijing Winter Olympics in the slightest, noted Chinese international relations and media experts.
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The WSJ, a center-right US-based media publication, published 28 reports on the Beijing Winter Olympics between February 14 and February 21, 13 pieces of which are related to China and Chinese athletes.
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Only two of the reports were relatively positive, focusing on Gu and China's record-breaking gold medal haul.
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Five had negative tones, involving claims of China's "data surveillance of athletes" and "dismal ratings for the Winter Olympics" that were patently untrue or have been repeatedly refuted.
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FOX, a typical right-wing media outlet in the US, ran about 143 stories between February 14 and February 21, 31 of which were closely related to Chinese athletes or China.
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FOX reported on international athletes' positive comments about the Winter Olympics, including praise for the quality of the ice rink in Beijing's Olympic Village, the efficient closed-loop quarantine measures, the popular Chinese food in the Village, high-tech elements, and stories of Chinese athletes' valiant efforts.
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Gu Ailing of Team China competes in the women's freestyle skiing halfpipe event on February 18. Gu became one of the favorite topics of American media outlets about the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games.

      Photo: Cui Meng/GT
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Gu Ailing of Team China competes in the women's freestyle skiing halfpipe event on February 18. Gu became one of the favorite topics of American media outlets about the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Photo: Cui Meng/GT
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However, some of the articles forcefully conflated the Games with unrelated political issues such as the situation in the island of Taiwan and alleged "human rights concerns" in Xinjiang, despite repeated calls from mainstream international voices to avoid politicizing the Games.
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In a piece titled "Beijing Olympics get political with Taiwan, Uyghur questions", FOX repeatedly peppered the piece with political issues, and hyped the question "if IOC uniforms and other IOC garments were produced by Uygur labor - or from Xinjiang cotton."
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Being regarded as a centrist media outlet by many, NPR published some 72 articles on the Beijing Olympics between February 14 and 21, and 10 of the articles were related to the host country China, and Chinese athletes.
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Of the 10 articles, only one was relatively positive, narrating the positive impact that Gu has had on more young girls participating in winter sports.
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The rest of the articles, while trying to maintain a relatively objective stance, included two direct attacks on China for "politicizing the Olympics" and "deplorable" restrictions imposed by the country's quarantine policies.
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USA TODAY, another US media among centrists, ran 105 stories about the Beijing Olympics from February 14 to 21, of which 10 were directly related to Chinese athletes or the organizers.
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Three of the articles were the relatively neutral coverage of the performance of Chinese athletes on the field. One article on February 18, however, was written in a biased and negative tone, intentionally quoting an individual athlete as saying the Beijing Olympics "terrible,", the Global Times found.
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Correspondents and their predetermined perspectives
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Many influential US media outlets sent correspondents to cover the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. At least 10 corresponds appear to be Chinese Americans or come from an Asian background.
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Looking into their stories, however, most of the correspondents acted not as bridges linking Chinese and American audience, but as barriers that deepened misunderstandings between the two.
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Amy Qin of the NYT, for instance, is a name familiar to many Chinese readers. This Asia-based correspondent regularly covers Chinese politics and society, and many of her stories have, in the past, sparked controversy laced with bias and misinformation, such a COVID-19 origins tracing piece that was published in June 2021.
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Qin wrote at least 12 stories during the Beijing Olympics, reporting from the opening ceremony and Chinese athletes, to China's dynamic zero-COVID policy and winter sports popularity, as shown by the NYT website. In a February 19 article covering the skiing development in Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, she blatantly mentioned the "genocide" rumor at the end, eclipsing any bright spots regarding skiing development in the region that may have been mentioned in her article.
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With a cross-cultural background herself, Qin seems particularly interested in American-born athletes of Chinese descents, and what the current China-US "rivalry" has done to the group. On February 16, she wrote that Nathan Chen, a Chinese American figure skater who won gold at the Olympics, was "ignored" by the Chinese public in a seeming attempt to criticize the so-called "resurgent nationalism" among "[Chinese] citizens."
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US correspondents in China have been a window for Americans to know more about the country. Unfortunately, "most [US correspondents in China] are actually tools to play up the negative image of China that caters to the American elites," Li Haidong, a professor from the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
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Nonetheless, in the era of the great boom of social media, these correspondents and the US mainstream media, can no longer dominate China-related discourse, as social media have increasingly become a popular way for people to follow Olympic-related topics, which indeed poses a challenge to the monopoly of traditional mainstream media in depicting China, Li said.
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Despite the widespread "political boycott" against the Games played up by the US mainstream media, Americans are not fooled and many still genuinely enjoyed watching the Games across numerous social media platforms and shared what they are fond of or the Games' most captivating moments. That's a reality, but also a story that never gets told, Vipinder Jaswal, founder of the US-based PR company Vippi Media, told the Global Times in a previous interview.
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Jaswal said that the mainstream media and politicians coming against the Games have the greatest function to negatively influence people and disseminate some type of propaganda, but people were largely not fooled.
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Narration full of bias and lies
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The collected data showed that in general, positive coverage of US media mostly focused on relatively light topics in specific sports or social areas, including Chinese athletes winning medals, and international athletes enjoying delicious meals at the Olympic Village.
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Many of its negative coverage, ridiculously, had little to do with the Games. These articles were usually related to politics and economy, and clichés that alluded to "problems" in China that actually don't exist, such the "Xinjiang forced labor" accusation. Regardless of the fact that much of the fake news has been clarified by Chinese government, US media rehashed them, lashing them to the Winter Olympics for eye-grabbing sensationalism.
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Discourse on the Games in the mainstream US media, whether liberal or conservative, has yet to get rid of the "gloom filter" that was projected in their typical coverage full of prejudice against China's development, observers said Although American media outlets with different editorial objectives speak for different groups in the US, they usually stand together against China for US national interests, they noted
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They are still trying to use the US political elitist narrative of human rights standards as a weapon to attack the Games, Li told the Global Times.This ideology-oriented reporting approach inevitably leads to bias in the US media's reporting on China, and it ends up further away from the "independence" and "transparency" advocated by Western news ethics, said Li.

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Sunday, April 4, 2021

Smear campaign serving

The US has found the world order quickly shifting and is feeling uneasy with the challenge from China.

Beautiful diversity: Today, there are 25 million Muslims living in China. Here, Muslim devotees are praying at the Nanxiapo Mosque in Beijing to celebrate Hari Raya Aidilfitri. — The Star
 
 THE legend of Admiral Zheng He (more commonly known as Cheng Ho to most Malaysians) has always fascinated me, being a history student with Peranakan roots in Penang.


In fact, I took the opportunity to travel to Nanjing, China, to pay respects to the great man at his tombstone.

The only snag was, Zheng He’s resting place remains a mystery, he who led historic voyages to South-East Asia and eastern Africa.

His remains have never been found, leading many to believe he received his final rites at sea during his last voyage, sometime in 1433.

But Zheng He is not a Uighur (pronounced as wee ger). He was from the Hui ethnic group, which comprises Muslims.

The history of Islam in China goes back more than a staggering 1,300 years.

While Zheng He is probably one of the most famous Muslims, there were others during the Ming rule, Muslim military generals including Mu Ying, Hu Dahai, Lan Yu, Feng Sheng and Ding Dexing.

There was also the famous Confucian Muslim scholar, Ma Zhu, who served during the Ming dynasty. The name Ma is the Chinese counterpart to Muhammad.

Today, there are 25 million Muslims living in China. The Hui is the largest group (48%), followed by the Uighur (41%), and together, they make up about 90% of the total Muslim population. The other Muslims include Kazakh (6,1%) and Dongxiang (2.5%), followed by the Kyrgyz, Uzbek, Salar, Tajik, Bonan and Tatar groups. They live mostly in Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai and Yunnan, and even in Beijing and Xian.

My trips to China have taken me to Xinjiang by air, road and train, where I spent weeks meeting these beautiful ethnic minorities.

I travelled on the Silk Road and tried imagining how ancient traders treaded the same path. Famed Italian merchant, Marco Polo, probably used the same route in the 13th Century to look for spices, silk and carpets.

My journey took me across the Taklamakan desert on long overnight trains to Turpan (or the Flaming Mountains), the setting of the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West, of the Monkey God fame.

The trip concluded in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of China.

Urumqi was a major hub on the Silk Road during the Tang Dynasty’s golden age, and today, it has one of the world’s largest bazaars.

Walking through the markets reminded me of the souq in the Middle East, being surrounded by the blue-eyed Uighur and their distinct Turkish looks, while blonde Russians, all speaking Mandarin, were among the other Chinese. It was an exotic place, indeed.

As a “banana” (a term describing a Western-educated Chinese with Western world views, and can’t speak Mandarin), I was lucky to have scholars from Universiti Malaya explain the historical and academic aspects of China.

I have also travelled to Xian, where China’s ancient capital, Chang’an, is located. It was home to more than 10 dynasties.

It was a delight for me to step into the mosques and immerse in local Muslim culture. Islam has long been part of Xian history, where the terracotta soldiers stand guard.

But today, Xinjiang is in the international news for all the wrong reasons. Damaging words, including genocide, have been hurled at it. The grim and gruesome word means killing many people from an ethnic group with the aim of wiping it out.

There is little evidence, if none at all, to prove genocide, but it’s such a strong emotive word that it recalls the Holocaust and Khmer Rouge killing fields in Cambodia.

The Xinjiang cotton fields are alleged to have practised forced labour, even though it’s common knowledge that machines are required for large scale productions. There have also been accusations of rape.

Nothing is spared in the mind games between the two superpowers (US and China) to discredit each other.

Reports on the issue have come thick and fast from CNN and BBC, almost on a daily basis, in fact.

It’s hard to ignore that since the protests in Hong Kong began, they have become more involved in instigative journalism than investigative journalism.

Since the racist campaign by Donald Trump, where China was blamed for the spread of the coronavirus, Americans and many ill-informed Westerners have looked at ethnic Asians – especially those with Chinese features – negatively.

They have lumped all Orientals together as Chinese, just like how some think turbaned Sikhs with beards must be Taliban.

Now, under the Biden Administration, there is little difference, except perhaps Joe is less antagonistic, though the anti-China sentiments remain.

From the coronavirus to Huawei, and Tik Tok through to purported spy scholars and the South China Sea, and now Xinjiang cotton, it has become a concerted campaign.

We all know the US has little love for Muslims anywhere in the world.

The US has dropped enough bombs in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, as well as imposed sanctions against Iran, to substantiate that claim. The US has also turned a blind eye to the plight of the Palestinians.

These assaults were launched on the pretext of destroying weapons of mass destruction owned by the Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi regimes, though we now know fact from fiction.

While the two weren’t angels (but more dictators), the fanatical Islamic State took over after the two were deposed and worsened the situation.

Now, the attention is China. It’s the perfect villain – communist rule, no elections and a campaign against Muslims in Xinjiang.

Most Americans can neither pronounce Xinjiang nor point it out on a map, although that seems a moot point to them.

The truth is, the US is jittery because its dominance is over. The world order has changed.

While the US was busy executing its campaign in the name of upholding human rights and western values, and burning trillions of dollars on arsenal, the Chinese spent the last decades building their nation and eradicating poverty.

No one should be surprised when China overtakes the US in the world economy. It didn’t happen overnight, though.

Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou may not be representative of the whole of China, especially compared to third-tier cities and rural areas, but credit where it’s due for the absence of homeless colonies in the cities.

As a Malaysian who has regularly visited China, I feel poor whenever I’m there. The glitzy skyscrapers, efficient transport system, low crime rate, affluence and orderly city administration has shown that China has certainly arrived.

The Chinese have become visibly wealthier and sophisticated, and while their tendency to flaunt their wealth rubs many the wrong way, they have simply become what the early rich Americans used to be. The rich Chinese are loud and brash, but along the way, they – just like the Americans did then – will change.

Rather than demonise China and its people, the US could do well with promoting its values, many of which are universal in nature, such as the rule of law, protecting individual rights, improving living standards and driving the engine of innovation.

The US remains the preferred destination for most people seeking migration.

The immigrants, including Muslims who refused to integrate, could have chosen Saudi Arabia, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait or Senegal, but they picked the US.

We embrace American culture and its lifestyle, especially Hollywood movies, Disneyland, burgers, Coca- Cola and music. That speaks volumes of how most of us admire the US.

While the Chinese are now at a stage where they are content with growth and material wealth, they will eventually question issues like environment, inequality and self-suffrage, when they find themselves without a safety net.

The expansion of the middle class has always been similar all over the world. When the stomach and pockets are full, people have time to talk about democratic ideals.

But for now, the chaos and destruction in Hong Kong and racism in the US have given reason for China, and Chinese all over the world, to push back, or even detest the aggressive campaign by the US. This is nothing more than blatant bullying.

It isn’t fair play, unlike what the US claims, because there’s clearly a lack of respect for competition.

We all believe “democracy is the worst system of government, except for everything else, ” as Winston Churchill said. It’s loud and messy, as we know, but power is more diffused in democracy, where it’s equally shared through the population, as James Stavridis, a retired US Navy admiral put it.

The Xinjiang campaign will come back to haunt the US. Unlike other Muslims in China, the Uighur have indulged in ISIS activities, including being actively involved in Syria, where many combatants are members of an Al Qaeda offshoot.

Reuters and Associated Press have reported of at least 5,000 Uighur in ISIS operating in Syria and Iraq.

Many of them from the outlawed Turkistan Islamic Party, are pushing for an Islamic state in Xinjiang, which China surely won’t tolerate.

That perhaps explains why China takes a different approach to the Uighur compared to other Muslims, though these actions remain open to debate.

But here’s the irony – while the US and its western allies are busy drumming up the issue, the powerful Muslim countries led by Saudi Arabia, along with 36 other countries, have defended China’s policies in Xinjiang in a letter released in 2019.

The world is not keen on getting entangled in an escalating trade war between the US and China.

We want both countries to work together, if they really believe and practise what they preach to the rest of us, the minion nations. And if they do, the world stands to benefit immeasurably.

 Wong Chun Wai

Wong  Chun Wai Wong Chun Wai began his career as a journalist in Penang, and has served The Star for over 35 years in various capacities and roles. He is now group editorial and corporate affairs adviser to the group, after having served as group managing director/chief executive officer. On The Beat made its debut on Feb 23 1997 and Chun Wai has penned the column weekly without a break, except for the occasional press holiday when the paper was not published. In May 2011, a compilation of selected articles of On The Beat was published as a book and launched in conjunction with his 50th birthday. Chun Wai also comments on current issues in The Star.

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A balanced media narrative is in order

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Anyone without a scales over his eyes and who has not succumbed to cerebral shampooing by the West will have realised by now that large parts of its media are biased, if not outright antagonistic, in their reporting of |"China.


FROM the riots in Hong Kong last year, whitewashed as peaceful pro-democracy protests, to the lockdown of Wuhan and other Chinese cities, derided as draconian and an abuse of human rights, the sting was always there, and often not even hidden in between the lines.

All this will be denied, of course, and not just by those media owners and employees but also the readers and viewers who swear by them. It is futile to debate them, such is their ideological bias that they leave themselves no room for doubt, much less introspection. They are entitled to their reading of China, of course, as are their critics to theirs.

It is perfectly understandable that Western media, especially those that publish and broadcast in English, will want to push what they believe is the interest of the West. No one should expect them to speak up for China and other non-Western nations. Or question the liberal democracy dogmas they have grown up with.

To be fair, there are also not a few among them who genuinely believe that what they do is also for the good of the Chinese suffering under the yoke of a totalitarian regime. And so they have gone at it full tilt, especially the Anglophone media.

It would be foolish for people in this part of the world not to see all this for what it really is - a war, not yet a shooting one but a war by other means nonetheless. Only the wilfully blind will fail to see that it is being waged by the United States and some of its allies to stymie a rising China just so they can hold on to their global hegemony.

Demonising and then isolating China, through disinformation and misinformation, is just one of the means. In the relentless pursuit of that goal, truth, to paraphrase what Hiram Johnson, US Senator for California, first said in 1918, has become the first casualty of this war. So much for the self-serving cant about these media being “respected” providers of fair, objective and balanced coverage.

Does all that matter? I submit that it does, to the millions in Singapore, Malaysia and many other former British colonies who have relied all these years on the English-language global media for their news, analyses and commentaries.

It’s time they woke up, if they have not already done so, to the fact that their understanding of what is happening in China, and, for that matter, many other places from Syria to Venezuela, is being shaped by those media with an unholy agenda.This awakening cannot come too soon as some Western media are piling on the pressure by echoing the spurious demands of anti-China politicians that Beijing must pay for the damage caused by the Covid-19 virus which it has set loose on the world.

If allowed to escalate and proliferate, this incitement of people whose lives are being devastated by the pandemic, is sure to result in more racist attacks against people of Chinese ethnicity, particularly in Western countries. It may well spin out of control into an armed confrontation between two sides, very possibly in the South China Sea.

But what can ordinary readers and viewers do? Well, they can send these media organisations a message. Those who have no problem taking pen to paper should write a protest note to them each time they spot a deliberate distortion - or to their respective regulator.

Nothing will come out of it, for sure, but those who are neither pro- nor anti-China but believe in fair play have to take a stand against deliberate bias and make it clear they will not stand for it.

It is in their enlightened self-interest to do so; if these media can target China now, then they can just as easily turn on their country next and cause damage, as was the case for Hong Kong when the Anglophone media turned a blind eye to all the fire-bombing, vandalism and vicious attacks against innocent citizens, and glorified the perpetrators as freedom fighters.

For those not inclined to write, they can just stop reading or viewing biased media. There are Singaporeans who have cancelled their subscription of The New York Times and ceased watching CNN over the slanted coverage of the Hong Kong riots. Yes, they care enough for Hong Kong and, more importantly, for fair play.

Sure, protesting this way may be inconvenient for those who are monolingual in English as there are few other media organisations that can rival the top Western players in global coverage and reach.

According to Comscore, the audience research agency, as at July last year, CNN had 166 million unique multi-platform visitors, BBC 148 million, Yahoo 117 million and FoxNews.com 111 million.

But choices in English are still there - Al Jazeera, which says it has more than 65 bureaus around the world and whose Arabic, English and other language networks have a combined reach into more than 220 million households; and CGTN, China’s global television network, which says its free-to-air English service reaches 85 million viewers in over 100 countries.

Admittedly, Al Jazeera and CGTN are nowhere near CNN or the BBC in reach and brand value but any fair-minded reader/viewer who has followed their work for a sustained period knows their products are nothing to sniff at.

Anecdotal accounts suggest that CGTN and, in particular, its presenter Liu Xin are gaining traction among the better educated in Singapore because of their measured and fact-based approach to presenting news and commentaries.

The accent of this commentary is on biased reporting of China. If readers and viewers are reluctant to forgo following Anglophone media despite their thinly veiled bias against China and other non-allied powers like Iran, then the least they can do is to also watch or read nascent competitors for balance.

And not to forget: their own English language national or regional media, too - whether it be the South China Morning Post, The Star in Malaysia or The Straits Times and Channel NewsAsia in Singapore. They make no self-glorifying claims to being the gold standard for good journalism but they do try to be objective, fair and balanced.

Individually, each may not have the resources of the existing global players. But in this regard, there is no reason why they cannot pool resources where possible and compete on the world’s media stage. Fair, constructive competition cannot be bad for media consumers. And the English-language media landscape deserves more than just the Anglo-Saxon narrative.

By Leslie Fong, a former editor of The Straits Times. The views here are his own. Source link

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