IN A JUNE 1 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Xinhua News Agency President Li Congjun advocated for a "media U.N." that would oversee news organizations across the globe in what he believes should be a new system that will "ensure openness and transparency" and promote "balanced, just and rational" media.
All this coming from the head of a Chinese Communist Party-controlled "news" organization which Reporters Without Borders has called the World's Largest Propaganda Machine. It is an agency that doesn't publish its controversial and truthful reports, but instead sends them up the Party ladder–a kind of intelligence service; it is an agency that spouts vitriol at those who speak out against the communist regime, or other declared "enemies" of the apparat.
It's hard to take Li seriously. Even more, it's a mystery why the WSJ gave him this platform. Xinhua represents the opposite of the WSJ's values of quality, non-partisan reporting. In 2007, the paper won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the adverse social and environmental effects of China's booming economy — a series of articles that never would have seen the light of day in China.
China scholar Perry Link, in a response to the WSJ, hits the nail on the head (emphasis added):
He does not show us the inside of his own organization. The top priority of the Xinhua agency, since its founding in 1931, has been to promote the interests of the Communist Party of China. Its public reports carry much information that is apolitical, but can never, on principle, carry material that party leaders view as harmful to their interests. Honest reporting on topics such as the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen massacre, Taiwan independence movements, Uighur unrest, Falun Gong, the imprisonment of Liu Xiaobo, corruption among high leaders—and quite a few others—is simply impossible. The few Chinese journalists who dare to address "sensitive" topics describe their work as "dancing in shackles."
[...]
There are only two ways to understand Mr. Li's op-ed. He is either being radically deceitful with your readers or has chosen your pages to announce an epoch-changing reorganization of the Xinhua News Agency.
Li and Xinhua have made no indication that the latter case.
Other American readers weren't fooled, either. Writes Eric Welton of Corona del Mar, Calif.:
Mao lives! He would be proud of Li Congjun whose Orwellian prescription for media, "promoting social progress" is hypocritical, especially coming from China, where the massive number of Internet censors obviously did not get the memo.
Who wants to tell Li Congjun and Xinhua that it's not 1984 anymore? Rich Miller of Broadview Heights, Ohio comments:
The late Joseph Goebbels summed up what Mr. Li is advocating: "Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play."
A cacophony of lies, trickery, and hatred. A blogger calling himself "Evolution of Physics" (物理学之进化) wrote on Sina Weibo (emphasis added):
Is running a media really that difficult? Regardless of whether you are a media of a developing nation or not, just report the truth, and credibility and recognition will therefore follow. Naturally, you will have your voice in the international community. The Arabs were able to create Al-Jazeera. You guys [Xinhua] have wasted so much taxpayer money, yet others merely see you as a monster. And now you are here to make a fuss and come up with ideological bull**** concepts.
Perhaps Li should stick to his state-run media outlets when grandstanding.
With Helena Zhu.
Does Xinhua really think the world doesn’t know what it is up to?
First of all, in the free world, news organizations don’t need to be overseen; they are established in society precisely to oversee the government–not the other way around–and to help voters (and governments) be well informed. Of course, in China there is no voting, so there’s no need for that, I guess.
Second, there is a fundamental problem with the interpretation of the terms “openness, transparency, balanced, just and rational.” Why doesn’t Xinhua give some examples of what that it means by open and just. I’ve heard Chinese people say that nothing Xinhua reports is true except for the date; whatever Xinhua says, think of the opposite, and you know the truth.
Being the mouthpiece of the Chinese communist regime, would openness, transparency, balanced, just and rational, in actuality mean: state propaganda to deceive, control, oppress and exploit the people? I think that’s it, because that’s what they are doing so successfully in China already and probably would like to export to the whole world–with U.N. sanction, no less.