This
was the headline that grabbed my attention the most today. “China attacks
Western media over Olympic coverage.” I spent a good amount of time reading
through this article before coming to a decided opinion and the realization
that I needed to blog about this.
First
off, the facts. China’s media is state/government run which is not like the
typical Westernized media where there is a lot more freedom in what you write
about. It would be the same as if Stephen Harper had to approve every single
news story before it came out at night, for the whole country. Right now the
official Xinhua Agency and People’s Daily are both accusing the Western media
of making up stories and releasing them to the public during the Olympics.
The
main bone of contention is the drama surrounding swimmer Ye Shiwen and her
amazing gold-medal finishes. This 16-yearold wonder seemed to swim out from
nowhere and dominate her events, coming ahead of even the men in her division.
Of course, this proceeded to get fingers pointing towards doping or other means
of cheating to explain this phenom. China has a long history of doping
throughout many of the games and has been shown having a very controversial
training schedule for future Olympic athletes. I think it’s for this reason
that the Western media is so quick to jump on the doping bandwagon given that
there speculations, for the most part, are not unfounded from past events.
That
being said, Shiwen has been cleared of all doping allegations and save for a
select few media sources, everyone has turned their attention to giving this
powerhouse swimmer her recognition. In some ways it comes with the territory,
you can’t just hop from the shadows into gold out of the blue and not expect
fingers to be pointed.
Where I
start to raise eyebrows at the Chinese media is when they start saying that the
Western media is on a campaign to discredit China’s achievements in the
Olympics. Nothing could be more false, the media is reporting on the news, what
people say and what the overall feel is. There are some news outlets that chose
to cling on to stories long after they’re dead, but for the most part the news
is impartial. Look at how hard CBC is being on Canadian athletes during the
games.
Publicly
painting the media over here as these propaganda machines against you is never
a good idea; it’s almost directly comparable to poking a bear with a stick. You
just don’t do it. Not only are you in one statement questioning the
journalistic integrity of all Western journalists, you’re painting yourself as
being the only “truthful” media outlet. This is also something that’s terrible
to state during the Olympics. You can’t paint one media system to be campaigning
against a country without backlash!
The
badminton disaster (in which two players were disqualified for poor playing,)
has not helped the Western media’s view of the Chinese during the games. Yes,
these are the choices of individual players, but every player in the games is
wearing the flag of their country. Look at the bad rep disqualified players
have gotten after racist tweets.
The
final point of the article that made me laugh and realize China has upgraded
poking the bear with a stick to full on prodding it with a Gatling gun, is when
it stated “the Western media has to adjust to the fact that China is a major
economic and sports power.” You can almost feel people inserting their
foreheads forcefully into their hands. If there’s one thing the Western media hates,
it’s being told what they have to do. That’s the beauty of the Western media,
for the large part they do not have solid, set rules about what content they
can talk about it. We come to rely on the media for stories about everything,
because our content is not regulated by the government. When an outside
governmental body controls their media and then starts to try to boss around
the Western media you’re just asking for backlash. Look at what happened when
NBC journalist Guy Adams had his Twitter account suspended, the uproar was
incredible, until Twitter reinstated the account.
As much
as China feels like the entire Western media is this evil entity campaigning
and propagating how terrible China is, China’s media itself needs to realize
that Western media is not governed by state law; therefore is free to talk
about what it wants. When you have years of doping and cheating in your
sporting teams it’s not unheard of for people to point that out.
All content taking from the Globe and Mail article “China
attacks Western media over Olympic coverage” by the Associated Press
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