More on China’s media connections
Yesterday I wrote a post that dealt with some of the propaganda efforts of China, and how they have bought influence in news media:
Now there’s this comprehensive article focusing on the American MSM:
The companies that own the major news networks, NBC, ABC, and CBS, all do significant business in China. On the print side, top U.S. newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times have been criticized for running paid China Daily inserts. What they were paid for these inserts is still unknown.
By contrast, conservative news companies are much less involved in China. Conservative radio giant Salem, whose attempt to buy Tribune several years ago provoked an enormous freakout from media reporters over consolidation, is all-American. And Fox, after several troubled attempts to break into the Chinese market—including sending a News Corp team to help build People’s Daily a website—has mostly given up, after selling its Asia-Pacific operations to Disney over the last two years.
Disney owns ABC and has a park in Shanghai. It also owns ESPN, which was criticized for its coverage of China’s retaliation against the NBA earlier this year over one team owner’s support of the Hong Kong protests. But other than ABC, Disney is relatively uninvolved in news.
Comcast, on the other hand, has a much larger footprint in the U.S. media landscape,
More at the link.
The US media has financial reasons and political reasons for defending China. They are, after all, on the left, and the left not only has a natural alliance with China, but since Trump has been clear (long before COVID) that he thinks China is a bad actor on the scene, the MSM wants to defend China in their continual campaign to invalidate Trump’s position.
It’s almost humorous, given the fuss that was made about Trump’s alleged Russian connection. Almost humorous, but not really at all.
I think in the cases of the really big guys like Disney it has far more to do with not wanting to lose the huge China market. That they get to take shots at Trump is just happy coincidence.
If everything were the same except China didn’t freak out at every criticism I think things would be different.
Every major media company knows the name Daryl Morey and lives in fear of the same thing happening to them and their sweet, sweet China revenue.
The White House Correspondents Association is just another arm of the democrats, and thus an accomplice of the CCP.
That organization kicked the OANN reporter out of the WH briefings and replace that reporter with a ChiComm propagandist. Trump smelled a rat and publicaly called her out.
I’m glad you’re posting. Internet issues are better to have than that other thing.
Also we found out our local professional seamstress – she worked on all our kids’ wedding dresses – is making fabric face masks. Yeah, SWMBO can do it for less, but we want to support local businesses when we can. So we’re buying a bunch for us and the family.
Stay well and no fighting!
I don’t know if any of you have the same impression, but in the last few years I have thought many times that the respect paid to China by the progressive world is really worrying.
Using the term “progressive world” I intend not only the American and European far left, which has always been stubbornly blind – and subsequently oblivious – to the horrors perpetrated in all Communist countries. Also the so called Social-Democrats in Germany, France or Italy; also a large part of the bureaucratic-financial environment; many universities, social institutions and even some activist groups treat China with the utmost deference. I suspect that large quantity of money are bestowed by China, much in the way that Islamic regimes spend mountains of cash in Europe in order to improve their image in newspapers and political circles.
But, beside economic interest, I see a genuine “sympathy” for China and its regime arising in many “respectable and educated” places. How many times China’s policies are defended or even justified?
It seems that their abysmal pollution is not a concern, notwithstanding the constant paranoia about allegedly apocalyptic climate changes; they can behave in the global market as pirates, stealing industrial secrets and intellectual properties, ignoring international laws as regard quality controls and the rights of the workers; their occupation of Tibet is accepted as if it were normal (the Dalai Lama is now seen with a certain fastidiousness in the good circles); their persecution of indigenous religions and Christians is totally ignored, and even Muslims are not interesting any more to progressive hearts when it’s China the one responsible for incredible violence and discrimination.
One of the most astonishing and sad fact, for me, has been to see the current Pope’s support for this heinous regime; his delegate to China dared to say that “China is the country which, in the whole world, implements the Catholic social doctrine in the best way”, and this while cardinal Zen, the most senior cardinal in China, is denouncing the constant harassment and censorship exercised by the state.
It really seems to me that, with the awakening of popular opposition to the globalist elites – both in America wit Trump and in Europe with Brexit and several victories for “populist” parties in Italy, Hungary and eastern Europe – “the progressive party” is considering the authoritarian regime in Beijing with interested eyes, as if saying: “Look how China’s become powerful, and how dangerous movements animated by unenlightened people are under control there. Sometimes, perhaps, it’s necessary to use some discipline, in order to do what’s good for humanity and the world.”
Well said, Paolo. Interesting that the “progressives” in Europe were bought off by the Arabs before they were bought off by the Chinese. One must not allow principles to get in the way of a fat purse, huh? Good for you to point that out. Too many in America pay very little attention to Europe. If it makes you feel any better, we pay even less attention to South America, which is much more in our sphere of interest. We are far more caught up in our own popular culture, which is ever more bought off by the Chinese.
Now the question is, will the world wake up to China’s aggression? Not that it is new: when I was stationed in Tanzania in the early seventies, the Chinese were building a railroad across the country. They were using a lot of Chinese coolie labor, despite high Tanzanian unemployment, it was a different rail gauge from other African rail systems, and they were demanding payment in ivory and other natural resources. They were also quite racist, and pretty generally hated by the Tanzanians I knew. Yet they have recently made a similar rail project in neighboring Kenya, with similar problems, and they are trying to take over management of ports all over the world (including the USA). Quite an aggressive Neo-colonial policy (my apologies to our host for the term).
F
They were also quite racist, and pretty generally hated by the Tanzanians I knew.
I knew a number of Chinese studying in the US. Most of them didn’t express an opinion about blacks to me, but those that did express an opinion of blacks would have fit in with the Klan.
The left is all about the administrative state.
So is Red China.
Edward R Bonderenka on April 7, 2020 at 7:40 pm said:
The left is all about the administrative state.
So is Red China.
* * *
The Left loves dictators except when it’s the wrong guy.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/cnn-john-harwood-trump-authoritarian-phoenix-tv
Harwood apparently failed to mention that the reporter lied when she claimed that she was employed by an independent organization.
China’s holdings in US companies – media and medical included – easily add up to far, far more than the Trump trusts’ holdings in French pharma.
It was always a 2 part process. Replace American workers from the south, replace American consumers from the east……..far east.
Some recent news about Phoenix TV.
https://libertyunyielding.com/2020/04/06/ted-cruz-chinese-company-seeks-mexican-radio-station-to-broadcast-propaganda/
Very good, detailed 2018 piece in the Guardian: “Inside China’s audacious global propaganda campaign”, which has this about how much newspapers are paid for those China Daily inserts:
In my estimation, the current Pope is an apostate. But that’s for someone of a higher authority to pass judgement on. That said, much of the Church’s upper management has never met a commie they didn’t like.
Ann:
That’s the article from the Guardian I talked about at length in yesterday’s post, the one I referred to in the first sentence of this post today.
Sorry, Neo, didn’t click on your link, and didn’t read yesterday’s post. My bad. Got to it today while searching for info on how much newspapers were making off the deal re China Daily inserts.
All things, even remotely, related to China needs to be expunged from world organizations, usa ‘press’, and the planet in general. Let them colonize Mwrs.
China publishes lies and buys lies in US media.
US media also publishes lies all by itself.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/cbs-news-posts-fraudulent-viral-video-sobbing-icu-nurse-quit-job-poor-working-conditions-mask-shortage/
That is, she admitted it after Sanders tweeted, not that she got the mask due to his tweet.
SMH – English is dead, but with COVID, not by COVID.
Hello F.
Thanks for your considerations and interesting recollections.
This is going to be a busy day for me, but I want to reply with some thoughts when I can.
I R A Darth Aggie,
When I was young, I was a good catholic boy. And I had an older neighbor who got me to read Malachi Martin, which as a good catholic boy, you weren’t supposed to do. It just wasn’t done. If you aren’t familiar with Martin, he was a priest and a former member of the Jesuit order but he left both.
Martin used to talk about The Lavender Mafia (amongst other things), an inside group of homosexual priests who ruled the Catholic Church, who also had communist/socialist leanings. After Pope Benedict’s brief time as head of the church, I started to become a believer in the Lavender Mafia. The more Pope Francis opens his mouth, the more I’m sure of it.
President Trump has pointed to the corrupt and incompetent UN’s World Health Organization, and especially to its head, Director-General, Ethiopian Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as being wrong at almost every turn in this Chinese Coronavirus Pandemic and, in particular, that Tedros’ and WHO’s pronouncements and recommendations had, in essence, followed the Chinese line, been pro-Chinese propaganda.
Moreover, I have noticed that when the MSM discusses Dr. Tedros they never include some basic facts about Dr. Tedros’ qualifications and background that everyone should know about, in order to make an informed judgment about his performance.
These missing facts are first, that Tedros is not medical doctor but, instead, has just a Ph.d in Community Health, and that, according to reports, he was appointed to his position due to the strong backing of China.
But of much greater importance and relevance are the fact that he is a Marxist revolutionary, and the record of his actions in Ethiopia, his leading role as a member of the Central Committee of the Politbureau of the Marxist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) —previously designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization–and the details and nature of his actions in both his role as Ethiopian Health Minister, and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs in that poor and strife-torn country.
See, for instance, https://www.roughestimate.org/roughestimate/the-crimes-of-tedros-adhanom and https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/35325-marxist-un-who-boss-must-be-put-on-trial-critics-say
Corrupt is ‘Us: The WHO, the UN, the EU, the MSM. All the right people.
They revel in it.
https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-un-human-rights-council-coronavirus-response
P.S. –For the opposite view of Dr. Tedros, take a look at this very detailed and extensive Wiki biography* of Dr. Tedros which sings his praises, but which gives just one cursory mention of his membership in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, and no mention of the TPLF’s activities in Ethiopia.
At least this Wiki bio did mention Tedros’ tone deaf, ill-fated, and soon rescinded appointment of Zimbabwean Dictator Robert Mugabe as, of all things, WHO’s “Goodwill Ambassador.”
* Of course, as I understand it, if you have the will, the time, and the personnel, you can work on such a Wiki biography, and shape it anyway you want–putting in the “good stuff,” and continuously removing the “bad.”
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom
Paolo,
Well stated. The same thing goes on in the U.S. on many levels. Few progressive groups mention China in their campaigns, when China is often the largest offender of whatever their cause is; CO2 production, animal rights, fair wages, freedom, child labor laws…
Many Americans who do not pay a lot of attention to politics were shocked to hear some of their basketball idols defend China in its effort to stifle democracy and rights in Hong Kong. Most had no idea how intertwined professional basketball is with the Chinese government.
I recommend The Epoch Times.