How low can Western media go

Anti-China Olympics reporting

The most recent example of the western media taking up a position even more extreme than that of the official mouthpieces of their governments comes from the New York Times. Touted in the western media industry as a national "newspaper of record", ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the US, the NYT picked on the Olympics to engage in its latest bout of China bashing.

In an article written by its Southeast Asian bureau chief which shows a warped political thinking and logic, the newspaper that claims to seek the truth and help people understand the world, had the sensational title of "The Chinese sports machine's single goal: The most golds, at any cost".

Claiming that China had manipulated the Olympics for political purposes, the article accused the Chinese government of "putting tens of thousands of children in government-run training schools", exposing them to health and mental stress risks and of funnelling these young athletes into "less prominent sports that Beijing hopes to dominate."

More than a cry baby article

A cry baby piece written after the end of the first week of the Olympics when China was leading in gold medals, the article - besides the political objective of running down the Beijing government and sports authorities - added a racist twist to the gold medals that China had won:

Beijing's focus has been on sports that can be perfected with rote routines, rather than those that involve an unpredictable interplay of multiple athletes.

British international relations analyst, Fowdy, in exposing the ideological and racial blinkers of the article, pointed out that the piece was patronizing, ridiculous, and just outright insulting to the Chinese Olympians who dedicate their lives towards competing and excelling in their chosen events as does any athlete from anywhere in the world. His conclusion:

Sport is sport, and may the most deserving athletes win, wherever they are from. The fact that the New York Times could produce such an utterly dreadful article on China is not surprising, yet it is endemic of a broader trend in US media, which – in line with the government's foreign policy – has become as negative, vilifying and outright hysterical as possible.

Is it any wonder why people in China have come to increasingly despise foreign reporting? The big three US newspapers in particular – the NYT, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal – spew an endless daily conveyor belt of anti-Chinese stories which seek to nitpick, discredit, and attack every single development within the country, often on utterly ridiculous premises.

How discerning readers have responded

Analysis of the responses from readers to the articles in the NYT twitter and RT website indicates that some are not buying the western media anti-China news reporting.

See https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1420674233152245769 and https://www.rt.com/op-ed/530706-nyt-china-olympic-success-article/) .