How low can Western media go

The gold medal for anti-Beijing hysteria goes to the NYT for its unhinged attack on China's Olympic Success

Tom Fowdy, in RT.

China emits in 16 days what Australia does in an entire year: Murray

Paul Murray on Paul Murray Live.

For the last four years, readers of media newspapers and websites in the US, Britain, Australia and their allies - especially after Trump's presidential victory in 2016 - have been the targets of a concerted move to demonize China and to bring down China's standing in the world.

This cold war approach is not only due to fear that China is gaining ground or winning in key sectors of international economic and geopolitical competition. It has also come about because China is seen as the principal threat to US and western dominance of the global system - a dominance unchallenged since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1992.

The demonization of China is now accelerating at a rapid pace under President Biden with western media more than eager to act as unofficial mouthpieces of the United States and its allies.

Today western news reporting on China or elsewhere, on any topic however unimportant that may have the remotest connection to China - technology, culture, space, global warming, health, the environment, vaccines and others - is likely to be written up to reinforce negative stereotypes of China.

Both simplistic and subtle messages are inserted to discredit and reflect poorly on the country, its government and its people. Most recently, journalists and sources who are Chinese or Asians have been recruited; and non-western names provided alongside or at strategic positions in the news article to give the impression that the media are engaged in balanced reporting!

Some of the media strategies practised by the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney Morning Herald, Sky New Australia and their other media allies in Asia such as Nikkei Asia and the Times of India in their news reporting on China include:

• Deletion, lowering or ghosting the profile of positive news on China
• Sensationalism, falsification and disinformation
• Baseless smearing
• Loaded words and vague terms
• Use of biased respondents and providing soft facts
• Reliance on bandwagon effect

Western anti-China oriented journalism extends to slanted coverage of tragedies such as the recent floods in Central China where voyeuristic and perverse reporting can be seen in the dissemination of an abnormally large number of images showing the devastation and human toll in Zhengzhou by some western media weather channels.