Yet again, I’m managing to neglect my blog here - everything from whether or not the economy is in a recession (and if so, for how long), to my absentee vote for John Edwards being mailed on the day he drops out of the race, to the New York Giants (a team I cared about when I was about 10 years old) winning the Super Bowl, to “le Rogue Trader,” Jérôme Kerviel, of Société Generale, or even to wedding plans (which I’m going to have to have Judi start putting some updates on that part of the site)…
But instead, I’m somehow managing to update on Chinese news. In an effort to better educate myself to globalisation, I recently started to sporadically read the English version of Xinhua online (Xinhua being the official news agency of the People’s Republic of China). Now, when you consider the fact that the site is the government’s “mouthpiece,” it’s easy to read it with the proverbial grain of salt. But that also presents an interesting conundrum.
See, I’m looking at two different stories from three different news sources here:
- ”In China, many greet New Year in dark” - from CNN.com
- “Snow-hit China welcomes New Year” -from BBC.co.uk
- “Chinese leaders visit disaster-hit regions on holiday eve” - from Chinaview.cn (Xinhuanet)
What is interesting is how these three major news stations are reporting the breaking events in the snowstorm in Asia. The first two articles assess the actual picture of health caused by the snowstorms, often times interspersing human interest stories to demonstrate the severity of the situation. The third article plays into the morale boosting by President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao, replete with photo ops of Mr Hu and Mr Wen meeting with “ordinary Chinese on Lunar New Year’s Eve.” Accompanying pictures in a photo gallery show the urban city of Hangzhou looking much like Boston, Massachusetts might during a Nor’easter.
Thus, the same story is really represented two different ways. Yet due to government censorship of some foreign media, its leaders still come out ahead. With the proliferation of the internet to all aspects of the world however, this changes the way we view events as well as history. Propaganda is not new, nor is it necessarily exclusive to Communist countries. Yet the outsider is more sensitized to these differences in stories (if not the inaccuracies themselves), even when the stories are apolitical. So the question still remains, which messenger of the news does one trust?
