MCLC: April Youths (1)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Anne Henochowicz <anne at chinadigitaltimes.net>
Subject: April Youths (1)
*******************************************************

MaryKay Magistad has given permission to share her rebuttal, posted on the
Pango-Pol list, to Hu Yinan's editorial.

Anne

======================================================

Interesting that Hu Yinan is presenting criticism of Western coverage of
the Tibet crackdown as something 'concerned youth' spontaneously decided
to do on their own.   In fact, sharp criticism of Western media reports
started with a concerted campaign by CCTV and other state-run media in the
days after the March 14, 2008 riots.

I remember doing random street interviews in Beijing in the day or two
immediately after the March 14th riots, and found no one saying they
thought Western media coverage of the riots was biased.  Once the
state-run media campaign got underway a couple of days later, most street
interviews I did included some mention of Western media bias, citing the
same two examples that state-run media had been hammering home.  Both, it
turned out, were technical errors made at the headquarters of media
organizations, related to the captioning of photos, rather than factual
errors within the main stories, written by China-based correspondents.

Diverting attention by discrediting those who told a different story than
state-run media was one of the stronger cards the government could play at
that moment, and it played it effectively.  Non-Chinese media reported
violence committed both by and toward Tibetans, gave the context for the
violence -- why Tibetans felt this level of discontent -- and continued to
report the subsequent crackdown over the following days, weeks and months.
 The state-run media were surprisingly effective in convincing the public
that if non-Chinese media were reporting something different from what
state-run media was, it was because of inherent bias and a desire to
demonize China in the lead-up to its moment of Olympic glory, not because
reporting the full story included aspects the Chinese government didn't
want told.  

A few weeks later, a small group of Western correspondents was allowed to
visit Lhasa on a tightly controlled, government-organized trip.  Upon
their return, several of the correspondents received death threats and
other forms of harassment from unknown sources.  Interesting, since
presumably just government entities had the list of those contact details
of reporters on that trip.

A final thought. Hu Yinan might appreciate how mistakes might
unintentionally occur, if he checks his facts on his statement that China
is "the largest creditor to the United States."   Actually, the Federal
Reserve is the largest single holder of US government debt, with $2
trillion, or about 12% of the total debt.  (And about one-third of the
total US debt is held by US government entities, including in trusts for
Social Security and Medicare.)   If Hu had said China was the 'largest
foreign creditor,' he'd be correct, but China still only holds $1.277
trillion out of the total $16.738 trillion US debt, or about 7.6%. Easy to
see how an honest mistake could be made, especially if writing in haste.
Perhaps Hu could consider that this, occasionally, happens in journalism,
too, without any other agendas at play.

Cheers,
Mary Kay Magistad 
<mmagistad at yahoo.com>