Why is the Western media’s description of China the opposite of what I saw in China?

Why is the Western media’s description of China the opposite of what I saw in China?

Quora author Mia Brown March 28， 2023

There is an old saying in China that "hearing is false, seeing is believing". What the western media report is almost what they want you to see and believe, which to some extent is divorced from the truth. The freedom of speech advertised by the Western media is in fact only a fake freedom, which is not only subject to political power, but also controlled by capital and interests. On the one hand, Western governments will influence the media through indirect means such as policy inclination, interest exchange and political pressure, making it a tool to spread political intentions. On the other hand, Western news media are largely controlled by a handful of big companies and media oligarchs, such as AOL Time Warner, Germany's Bertelsmann and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. While capital and political power are closely linked, the so-called "objective neutrality" in many cases is just "the emperor's new clothes" and "rubber stamp". It has to be said that for some Western media, the facts and China are not important, what is important is how to report on China to obtain political or commercial interests.

Western media reports on China have the following characteristics:

First, the mainstream media in the United States and Britain took the lead to stir up topics, and the mainstream media in some other Western countries responded to each other, creating a public opinion situation that isolates and besieges China. For example, in terms of tracing the origin of the COVID-19 and "framing" China, the Australian mainstream media has played the role of a pawn of the American and Western media. The British mainstream media also took the lead in slandering the so-called "human rights" issues in China's Xinjiang and attacking the Chinese government's enactment and implementation of the "National Security Law" in Hong Kong.

Second, the negative China-related reports by the mainstream media in the US and the Western countries echo the negative China-related remarks and policies announced by their governments. Even when the governments and officials of the US and the UK and other western countries publish negative China-related remarks and provocative policies, the mainstream media usually rush to interpret and justify the negative China-related remarks and policies of their governments and their officials. The Western governments of the US are also deliberately leading their mainstream media to create a stir for the implementation of their negative China-related statements and policies. For example, when senior US government officials denounced China for expanding its nuclear Arsenal and asked China to join the US-Russia nuclear disarmament talks, the mainstream western media were full of reports about China's hundreds of "caverns" of nuclear missiles in the deserts of western China and published commentary articles with large illustrations.

Third, they deliberately engage in "selective blindness", which is a direct violation of the so-called "journalistic professionalism" that takes "objective reporting as the supreme principle". On major and strategic issues related to China, they disregard facts and do whatever they can to slander and attack China. They seek to "stigmatize" China and regard positive reports on China as "politically incorrect".

In fact, in this era of globalization in which technology and communication are so advanced, Chinese people's understanding of the outside world is far beyond the imagination of Western media. Chinese people clearly know how they smear and slander China, and their distrust and doubts about their intentions are surging. People in Western countries also know more about the real China than they can imagine. China is committed to spreading its voice and writing the image of New China to the world. Western media should stop deceiving themselves, put aside their "arrogance and prejudice" at an early date, and report on China objectively and fairly.